


'Til the skies bleeds ashes

by spectralarchers



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Ultimates, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, NaNoWriMo, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-19 12:04:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16534220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectralarchers/pseuds/spectralarchers
Summary: In Wakanda, a titan snapped his fingers, and immediately, half of the world disappeared.What happened on the other side of the planet, when the Avenger Hawkeye, suddenly found himself without his family and alone? What happened after the Event, that left the planet defenseless, and after half of humanity gone? Who will look after the ones that are left? Is there anyone left to fight for humanity?Author's note: I will finish this fic, in spite of not having updated since 2018. I am currently (May 2019) finishing writing my Master's thesis on the MCU, and that thesis is taking up all my writing energy. However, as soon as it's done, I will resume writing this story and hopefully measure up to how Endgame wrapped things up <3





	1. Introduction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my 2018 NaNoWriMo. I will be posting it as I write the story, as I've experienced reading your reactions and comments is the best kind of motivation for writing this.
> 
> It is a post-Infinity War story, centered around Clint and what happened to him and his most precious ones. I can't wait to share this with you all. 
> 
> I am [spectralarchers](http://spectralarchers.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, where you are always welcome to come yell at me.
> 
> Have fun!

It takes Clint three minutes to figure out what he needs to do. He’s prepared for this his whole life, he’s known exactly what he’s supposed to do in case something like this happened - they’d talked about it back when he was a young, restless rookie, back when Peggy Carter, Howard Stark and Nick Fury had sat him down in an office to discuss what his plans were for his career at SHIELD.

He’s known for a long time, and still, it takes him three minutes to figure out what’s happened. He sits on the couch, holding Lila’s backpack against his chest, as he inhales the scent of her. There’s ashes on the ground where she stood last, and next to that, lies another pile. Cooper was standing right there - he’d dropped the jacket he was trying to get into as he- as he-

Clint looks up, through the room, to the stairs. He’d turned off the hot water running from the showerhead when he’d realized that whatever had happened to Lila and Cooper had happened to Laura. She was gone. 

There wasn’t even any ashes left, they’d all been washed down the drain. He hears the splashing of the water before he notices it, and before he knows it, he’s switched off the shower and is staring at the water dripping down the drain, pulling ashes with it away. Erasing all traces of his wife from existence.

It isn’t Nathaniel that pulls him out of his thoughts, though, although it could have been. He seems to be less impacted by whatever just happened than Clint thought he would. He’s playing with some of the Duplo-bricks Clint had found for him. Laura was supposed to bring Cooper and Lila to school, Clint was supposed to take care of cleaning the living room.

Those plans had fallen apart the night before, as Tony Stark had been kidnapped by an alien vessel after leaving New York wrecked yet again, as Edinburgh had been the witness to a battle between Wanda and Vision and other wordly invaders, and as Wakanda had stood its ground in a magnificent battle against… against whatever it had been.

And suddenly, everything had stopped. In an instant, the television and radio had stopped broadcasting like it usually did, some claiming technical difficulties, and Clint had heard Nathaniel shriek.

As he sits there, on the couch, thinking about what’s just happened, he realizes a sound is pulsating through his hearing aids. He’s never heard it before, but he knows that this means one thing and one thing only. Putting down the backpack, he moves quietly. Almost as if time has slowed, as if things have stopped and everything is in suspension.

Clint is afraid that if he opens the drawer, and if he opens the little chest, then everything is going to shatter. Like when a framed picture is about to hit the ground after it’s been pushed off the bookcase. If he takes the little box out of the drawer, it’ll be real.

It’ll mean that the worst has happened. 

It’ll mean that he failed in protecting his family.

It’ll mean that not even SHIELD can help him, this time.

Because, if he takes out the little chest, he’ll be all that’s left of SHIELD. And Clint isn’t sure how he feels about that. 

So, he pulls open the drawer, as Nathaniel looks up from the Duplo-bricks he’s assembled, and Clint takes a deep breath. He puts down his thumb on the mechanical reader, and a red light flashes as his thumbprint is recognized by the device. It clicks open, and Clint pulls out the pager equipped with the older SHIELD logo, a witness to the age of the device.

He pulls the pager out, before turning it around to watch as the screen flashes blue, yellow and red at the same time in what he remembers is the logo they decided would be Carol’s. They’d sat down around a table with a notepad and some markers and decided on what their icons would be, mostly so that SHIELD could differentiate between them as agents. Clint had picked the chevron, because he didn’t want it to be a target. He’d said that it was too obvious.

The pager slips through his fingers as he tries to adjust it, and as it hits the ground, his knees buckle as well, and they hit the hardwood floor with a bang, numbing his legs, as he tries to catch himself on the bookcase. The high pitched ringing the pager has been emitting for the past two minutes stops abruptly as the device hits the floor, cracking open, the main circuit flying out of the PVC case, stopping the display and the message.

There’s no reason for this to have happened other than Nick activating this. He was the only one who could. After Peggy died, only Nick was left to know what to do if they needed Carol back.

Time slows again as he watches the shattered pieces of the device on the floor. He can see the dust he hasn’t swept away with the broom for a couple of days in the sunlight of the rising sun. He can see the marks of the kids’ wheeled toys indented on the wood, and he knows that that specific stain is from that one time he’d kissed Laura after she’d told him she was pregnant.

He looks around, tries to locate his phone. His knees hurt, and he wonders if he’ll get a bruise for a half a second before he reaches out for the phone and immediately dials the shortcut he’d set up for Nick. There’s no dial tone. 

He tries again. No dial tone.

He looks at the phone screen, and looks at the coverage bars expecting them to be down, but the screen says loud and clear that there is more than enough coverage to make it through to wherever Nick was. He unlocks the phone (Laura’s birthdate reversed) and finds Maria’s personal phone. 

He’d phoned her once to ask her about something work related, and she’d threatened to kill him. He had never dialled the number again. This time, there’s nothing. No dial tone. Nothing. It doesn’t even go to the answering machine for him to leave a message.

Clint realizes that his breath has picked up, and he can feel himself letting the panic set in, as he scrambles to dial Nick’s number again, in case he’s remembering the shortcut wrong. Still no answer. He closes the phone application and looks at the news notifications that are flooding his lock screen: Twitter is sending out warnings on traffic lanes and delayed planes, there’s a service message issued by the State of Iowa about a nationwide event that has triggered a chain reaction of car crashes and that they’re sending out help as soon as they know what help there is to get. Notifications from other news outlets continue to tick in, as Clint watches the coverage bar decrease from three to two. 

It’s as if the world is unravelling in front of him, and it’s happening on a screen. He watches, as he opens the twitter app, and the tweets are going off like crazy: missing, accidents, crashes, planes, fires, floods… Something has happened.

He exits the Twitter app and goes back to the phone and dials Natasha’s phone number, but as soon as he’s about to hit the green call button, he hesitates. What if- what if she doesn’t answer? He deletes the number he’s just typed in and tries Nick again. 

There’s no dial tone.

He tries Maria Hill’s phone number.

There’s no dial tone.

He tries the emergency pager Steve Rogers had used to call him about where Wanda was.

There’s no dial tone.

The lights flicker, and Clint looks up to the ceiling. The television switches off, and the radio stops transmitting, as a monotone long electronic sound takes its place. Clint hasn’t heard that sound since before the electronic age, since before the internet, since the time when televisions would lose signal and there’d be nothing to do except wait.

The service bars on the phone flicker, going from two to one, and from one to zero. 

No network coverage.

“Daddy, turn it off!”

He looks over to Nathaniel who’s stopped playing with the Duplo-bricks and is holding his hands against his ears in what seems an effort to stop the sound that the radio and the television are making.

He watches his son, and feels himself getting distanced by it. He doesn’t realize he hasn’t moved at all until his phone slips from his fingers and his son asks him to shut it off again. “Daddy!”

Clint falls to his ass, as he watches the living room around him, his three year old toddler suddenly up on his feet, scrambling for the remote controls that are lying on the sofa table. He picks one up and brings it to Clint, “Here, turn it off!” he says, as Clint watches him put the remote down on his lap, before going to grab the other remote, and then another.

“Daddy, turn it off, it’s too loud!” Nathaniel finally says, louder than he probably meant to, and Clint snaps out of it, turning off the sound, and rushing to pull out the plug of the radio. 

There’s no network anywhere. 

Laura’s gone. 

Cooper’s gone.

Lila’s gone. What’s happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, do you like this little teaser? 
> 
> I will try and post the next chapter soon.
> 
> Let me know how you liked it in the comments. Comments are what will help me get through this NaNoWriMo challenge, I can assure you of that!


	2. Immediately after the Snap.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing left for Clint in Waverly, Iowa, and so he turns towards New York to find solutions there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of you seem so excited to read this story, and it's so energizing! I'm so excited to share this chapter with you, and I apologize for the length of it, but I felt like this all worked together rather than breaking it up into several parts.  
> I hope you enjoy it <3

The emergency generator kicked in about half an hour later. Clint walks out of the house, barefoot and all, Nathaniel on his hip.

“What’s going on, daddy?”

“I don’t know,” Clint answers, as he looks around his property, inspecting the powerlines for as far as his eyes can. There doesn’t seem to be any fallen trees, but knowing his Twitter-feed had been filled with reports of crashes and more, he knows that it’s got to do with whatever happened.

Whatever it was.

There is still no network coverage, so his phone is silent. He has no idea if a third world war has begun, or if some great alien invasion has started, somewhere, on the other side of the planet.

“What- what- where are mommy and Delilah?” Nate asks, and Clint walks back inside the living room, the hum of the petrol-generator quietly crackling life into the light bulbs above their heads and into the heating panels around. 

Clint’s built a little fire inside the fireplace, because as soon as the power had gone out, he knew that it wouldn’t take long for the cold January weather to invade their home. He carries Nathaniel on his hip up to the two duffel bags he’s opened on the couch and is currently packing with one hand.

He sighs. “I don’t know where mommy went,” he replies, as he picks up some of the clothes he’s managed to carry down from Nathaniel’s room. There’s onesies, pants, shirts, jackets and clean undergarments for his son. He’ll pack his own bag soon. He’s got no idea what he’s supposed to do, but he can’t tell that to his kid now, can he? “Something happened, and Uncle Nick hasn’t phoned to let me know, but I promise, we’ll see mommy soon, yeah? And Lila and Coop will be back soon as well,” he says, mostly for himself than for his son.

“Not the Star Wars pants,” Nathaniel mutters as Clint picks up four sets of clothes. He watches his son wiggle against his chest, and puts down the Star Wars themed clothing, before lying the other clothes down into the duffel bag.

“What shoes do you want to wear? We’re going to go to Adam’s, and you’ll get to show them what a big boy you are,” Clint says, as he walks over to the front door, kneeling and sitting Nathaniel down on his thigh, so the kid can pick some shoes to bring.

“Where are we going?” Nathaniel asks, instead of picking the shoes. “I want mommy,” he says, trying to escape Clint’s grip and slip off his thigh, uninterested in the shoes. 

“You have to- Nate!” Clint calls, as his son slips away and begins walking to the stairs, makes it one step up, before Clint lifts him off his feet and cradles him in his arms again.

As soon as his father’s arms close against him, Nathaniel starts screaming. Clint grits his teeth, as he tries to suppress the pain inside. He can’t let Nathaniel go upstairs and find the rooms empty - how does he explain to his kid that his mom isn’t where she was? 

“I want mommy!”

“You have to pick your shoes, Nathaniel, we’re going away-”

“I want mommy!” he wails, and struggles against his father’s grip, before screaming again. Clint sets his son down on the floor again and kneels in front of him, putting his hands on his shoulders. Nathaniel plops down to sit on his ass instead of standing and begins crying instead of screaming, small huffs and puffs shaking his body as the wailings are replaced with heaving and sobbing. “Daddy, where did mommy go?”

“I don’t know, buddy, but here, we’ll take the blue shoes and the green shoes? The ones with the Hulk on them? You like those, right?” he tries, instead of answering a question he can’t answer. He doesn’t want to lie to his child, he doesn’t want him to know that Clint is terrified of what has happened - he was always the first to know, or one of the first to know what was going on. He’s fought monsters and gods and aliens and he fought robots and mind control, and here he is, unable to console his youngest son about what happened.

“We’re- we’re going to go see Adam, yeah? You know Adam, he has a dog, remember? He let you walk the dog when we were there last time-”

“Can we use the sleigh?” Nathaniel asks, and Clint frowns. 

“The sleigh? Oh, yeah, yes, yes, the dog can pull you on the sleigh, there’s still snow outside, yeah?”

Clint is trying to reassure his son, but also himself. If he can get the neighbors to watch Nathaniel, maybe he can figure out what’s happened. He keeps checking his phone every five minutes, but it seems as though no technologies seem to be working.

He’d picked up the broken pieces of the pager and reassembled them, but it had refused to turn on again. He hopes that whatever happened wasn’t a mishap. But, from the sound of it, if electricity had gone, if the network coverages had gone, then… it probably wasn’t. 

“We’re going to go visit Adam, and we’re going to see if he can call grandma, maybe, yeah?” Clint whispers, as his son nods, seemingly alright with the notion of a dog and a friend to keep him company. Clint is still thinking about what he’s supposed to do, as the house feels like it’s choking him up - he thought they’d be safe here, in the middle of nowhere Iowa. Safe from HYDRA, safe from Ultron, safe from Loki, safe from whatever was hunting them and whatever they were fighting against, and when he’d felt the safest, whatever it was had come for his family and there hadn’t been a single goddamn thing to do about any of it. At all. 

* * *

Clint has one hand on the steering wheel, and one hand hanging between the two front seats, holding his son’s foot in the other. Nathaniel wanted to sit in the passenger’s seat, but that’s too dangerous for a toddler in a child’s seat, so Clint had made him sit in the middle seat in the back of the Ford truck.

He’d thrown their duffel bags in the back seats as well, and had hidden the bag with the weapons under the passenger’s seat. Nathaniel shouldn’t get to reach that bag, it was too dangerous. There were no guns, but it was still too dangerous for a child of three years to get near them. 

The road is quiet. It’s as if, after the first couple of hours since the Event, everyone had left the road and had decided to not venture out. There aren’t that many headlights or tail lights lighting up the freeway, and the number of cars crashed in the immediate vicinity of the road or in the masts of the signs, and the number of cars turned over is a surprise to Clint. He hadn’t thought that that many accidents could happen at the same time.

He’s just made it onto the freeway. He had put the ten gallons of gas he kept in the barn in the back of the truck, secured them with barbed wire, and had left the house. They were going to the neighbors, and that meant that they had to cross about six miles of landscapes. The freeway was the fastest way, but now that he’s made it there, Clint isn’t too sure about it. 

Nathaniel fell asleep as soon as Clint had started the engine.

Clint stops on the side of the road, and looks around him - there are no other drivers out here. One of the cars that’s crashed not too far still has an emergency light blinking, and Clint stares at it for a while, wondering what the hell happened. Some sort of virus? Some sort of radioactive- something must have happened?

“Shit!” 

He lets go of Nathaniel’s foot, and throws the car into park, running out of it as soon as he realizes that someone just moved in the car that’s lying upside down on the side of the curb. He runs forward, wishing he had a gun he could use, and hopes the knife he’s got is enough.

General Ross had taken all his weapons - all of them. His bows, his guns, his riffles, some of his knives. He’d left a shotgun to Laura, because it was registered in her name, and had left Clint the katana hanging above the fireplace because they hadn’t even paid attention to it. Clint still had some arrows hiding here and there, and he’d found one of his newest recurve bows that could snap into separate parts in the barn, hidden in different places.

As Clint nears the overturned car, he listens to anything that might indicate a trap. “Hey, are you okay?” he calls, when no threat seems immediately present. There’s no answer, except heaving, and Clint throws himself on his knees to have a look inside the car. 

A young girl is still fastened to her seat, her eyes bloodied and red from hanging upside down for too long. “Hey, hey, look over here, I’m a friend, okay?” he says, because he’s sure he’s seen her around, but he can’t remember who she is. “I’m gonna get you out of here,” he says, unsure of exactly how that’s going to happen. He tries to open the car door, but it’s locked, so he looks around, his breath fogging up at the cold that’s greeted him. He’s amazed she’s still alive.

“Hey, here, I’m going to cover your eyes, okay, I’ll break the glass and cut you out, okay?” he says, and she answers the best way she can, with a huff and he thinks her voice must have suffered from the cold. He hands her his scarf and binds it around her head, before knocking the car glass out with the back of the hunting knife he’s pulled from his pants.

The glass shatters everywhere, and he covers his own face, before crawling into the car and cutting the seatbelt in a swift motion. He twists and turns to catch her, before he grabs her under the arms and starts pulling her out of the wreck.

She doesn’t say much, but Clint realizes she’s cold as ice. She needs to get hot again, and she’s got a gash on the side of her head he needs to stitch up. He pulls, again and again, and finally, he manages to make it out of the wreck. He sits there with her against his chest, before he looks around. “Hey, I got you,” he says, as she whimpers, and he throws himself up to his feet, picking her up and carrying her back to the truck. 

Nathaniel’s still asleep as he opens the passenger door, moves the duffel bag with knives away from it, and gently puts her in there. “Hey, hey, I got you,” he says again, as he pulls off the improvised blindfold he gave her, and she blinks once or twice.

“You’re-” she starts, but gets caught in a coughing fit, as he turns around and goes back to the car. He breaks the back door window and fishes for anything that looks like a bag or anything in there, and gets a jacket out as well as a purse. There’s a duffel bag in there too, so he brings it with him back to the car, throwing it onto the back of the truck, before he reaches for the driver’s door and gets back inside.

She watches him worriedly, before he turns the engine one again, the heat making its way through the vents. Her hands fly to the air vents immediately, and Clint watches as she tries to rub her feelings back into them.

“You’re that guy-” she says, and he puts the car in drive, as she tries to find her words. “You’re- what happened?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he replies, checking in the rear mirror whether or not his son is still asleep. When he finds that Nathaniel is still sleeping soundly in his baby seat, Clint moves out into the road, zig zagging between the crashed cars and trucks. There’s spilled products near that one truck they’re passing, so he slows down so as to not blow out a tyre.

“I was-” she starts, as she looks down at her hands, “my mom was driving, and suddenly something happened and she wasn’t behind the wheel anymore. I think a lot of the cars crashed at the same time,” she says, too crystal clear about what had happened to be unaffected. Clint sends her a glance, before she continues. “I don’t know what happened, we were talking and- and all of a sudden she wasn’t there anymore, she’d just…”

“Turned to ash,” Clint finishes and the girl looks over at him. “Same thing happened to- same thing- the same thing happened to-” 

He looks into the rearview mirror, and the girl looks over her shoulder.

“You’re that guy from the Avengers, aren’t you?” she asks, looking over at little Nathaniel sleeping, his head bobbing back and forth to the rhythm of his father’s driving. “Mom used to talk about you,” she continues. “We sort of figured it out after the whole Germany incident. Well, mom mostly thought it was true, because suddenly you were home and the FBI would come every now and then, you know?”

She pauses, as she strikes the side of her face with her hand. “What happened?” she asks, and Clint shakes his head.

“Like you said,” he answers, pointing to the ankle bracelet around his leg. “I was stuck here because I did something wrong for my family. I don’t know what happened. All I know was that suddenly, everything I thought I knew changed.”

He pauses, as he steers out, towards the next exit on the road. “What’s your name, kid?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, so he gives her his name instead. “I’m Clint.” 

She smiles at that, and nods to herself. “I’m Julie,” she says. “Julie Power.”

Clint nods back at her, and then turns on the long lights on the car to have a better view of what’s in front of them. It’s still morning, just before noon, but the darkness seems to have crept up from somewhere.

“Do you know this place?” Julie asks, and Clint nods. 

“Yeah, they’ve watched my kids for a while sometimes, and we used to dogsit whenever they’d go on holidays. I’m hoping they’re home… Or alive,” he mutters to himself, as he drives the car up the gravel road to the front of the house, but the lights out don’t bode well for them. “Wait here,” he tells her and watches Nathaniel, who’s still asleep, even though he’s struggling a bit in his seatbelt, before getting out of the car, his hunting knife back in his hands.

There’s no sound coming up on the porch. Clint walks around towards the window and looks into the house, but there’s no activity inside, so he goes to the front door, quietly, so as to not make any unnecessary noise. He tries the handle, quietly turning it…

And jumps three steps back when a dog starts barking on the other side of the door. He recognizes the dog barking, and calls out. “Hey, hey, bud, calm down, it’s just me,” he says and the dog quietens for a little while, before he starts barking again. Clint puts the knife back into the holder on his thigh and kneels to pick the lock, but realizes that it’s open as he does so. As soon as the door is unlocked and open, it springs open and the dog jumps onto him, knocking him back with a pair of teeth locking close enough to Clint’s face that he almost sees his life flash before his eyes.

However, the golden retriever soon recognizes him and his scent and moves away, grunting satisfied at his work as a guard dog and trots down the frozen stairs to the car that he circles, as Clint makes it into the house. There’s no sound in there at all, and a broken glass on the floor as well as blood stains throw him off. He pulls the knife back out, but finds nothing but… dust and ashes. In the living room. 

“Shit,” he mutters to himself as he looks around, and finds the dog sitting  at the door, watching him with an ear perked up. “Yeah, you’re lucky I found you, aren’t you?” Clint mutters, as he puts the knife away again, and walks out the door, the dog following him expectedly. Clint watches him wag his tail, then looks into the car where Julie and Nathaniel seem to have dozed off both of them. If he couldn’t leave Nathaniel with Adam and his wife Miranda, then… What is he supposed to do? He can’t just leave the dog here, can he?

The dog in question whimpers, before going to the back of the truck and scratching at the back, as if asking to climb aboard. Clint sighs, rubs the back of his neck and takes a deep breath as he looks around. The sky doesn’t look like it’s going to light up at any point soon, so he just shrugs. “Guess you’re coming to New York with me, buddy,” he says, as he opens the back latch of the truck and watches as the dog gracefully hops aboard, making itself at home next to the bags from Julie’s car.

It seems that whatever happened to Laura also happened to Julie’s mother and to Adam and his wife. What the hell  _ had  _ happened? What the hell had supposedly had enough of an effect to touch every person in the world? What could it have been?

In the moment, Clint had felt something burning inside his chest, but hadn’t thought any of it. Not particularly, anyway. His hand flies to his chest, as he locks up the back of the truck again, the dog leaning its face against the hatch, looking at Clint with a watchful eye. “You think it had something to do with the mind stone?” he asks the dog, as if it’s going to help him.

When the dog just sits there with its tongue lolling out of its mouth, drooling onto Clint’s truck, Clint rolls his eyes and walks back to the driver’s seat. There’s a long way to New York, and he’ll need to get food first. He won’t survive a trip that’s 16 hours if he can’t get his kid to sleep.

He’s been making a mental list of things he needs to get. Power banks and a plug to charge their electronics while they’re driving. He needs to fill some of the extra gas tanks he’s brought, and he needs food. Any kind of food that’s easy to prepare and easy to transport. He knows that it’s risky to go into town to get those things, but he knows he has to. He absolutely and undeniably has to do it. If he’s going to figure out what to do, he needs to make it to New York City. There’s something there that will help him figure out what he needs to do.

He climbs into the driver’s seat again and sits there, looking at his phone. There’s still no cell phone service, and when he locks it, the lockscreen lights up for a couple of seconds. It’s a picture of Laura hugging Lila that he took when they were on holidays some months ago. 

It’s real, isn’t it? That’s what he thinks to himself, as he sits there, surrounded by two children he has to care for. And a dog. 

Why did he take the dog, again? He smiles to himself. He had a dog, once. Many, many years ago, he had a dog that only had one eye and his brother and him would make jokes about him only eating pizza. He’d put the dog down when it had gotten older, Clint remembers. He could barely walk, but his tail wagged so generously whenever he was near Cooper. The dog would sleep near Cooper’s crib every single night, and whenever Cooper would start cooing, Lucky would answer back in a way that made Clint and Laura sleep sounder at night.

They put him to sleep the year after, before Lila was born. There’s some pictures somewhere, back home. Clint isn’t so sure where. Laura would know. Laura knows where every single item in that house is. But he can’t ask her now, can he? Because she’s gone. 

And he has to do something about it. 

* * *

It’s even worse when he gets into the city than he thought. The cars have crashed into homes, there’s people wandering aimlessly, and people bloodied flooding the hospital. It seems that the few police cars available have been commandeered and the police officers are struggling to keep the peace.

Julie is awake now. She’s watching, with Clint, as life outside of the car seems to unravel, the closer they get to the city center. There’s people, broken windows. Some of the shops on the main street have already been looted, and it’s been what, a couple of hours?

Clint tries the radio in the car, but finds only static. He doesn’t dare roll down the window, and when Julie points to a couple sitting by the side of the road, looking lost, Clint decides to make a U-turn. He can’t help all of these people - they need food to get to New York. However, he looks at Julie and then at the couple sitting by the road.

“You know them?” he asks, and she nods. 

“You know where they live?” he asks, and she nods again, this time pointing to the street leading up to the side of the road, down the next road. They hear the dog bark in the back of the truck, and Clint starts the engine again. They can’t stay here. If someone steals the gallons of gas from the back of the truck, they’ll never make it to New York.

“You gotta go take care of them, alright?” he says, and she nods. He bends forward and opens the glove compartment, pulling out a smaller hunting knife. “Take care of yourself, kid,” he continues, and unlocks the door mechanism for her. She leaves the car, but before slamming the door shut, she turns around. 

“You’re an Avenger, right?” she asks, and he nods, unafraid to answer that question truthfully. It seems like the world has taken a hit it wasn’t prepared for, and what he isn’t or is doesn’t really seem to matter right now.

“Yes, I am.”

“Go avenge your family and mine. Please?”

“I will. I promise,” he answers, and without another word, she slams the door to the car, and Clint sets it to drive again, turning around and making it back out of the city center. There’s panic. Some cars are on fire, turned over by whatever had caused them to crash, and as they drive by the hospital he sees people sitting there, bloodied and bruised and battered and with nothing to help them get better because it seems nobody knows what happened.

They drive out to the outskirts to the biggest Walmart there is in the area, and Clint finds a parking spot that’s close enough. He opens the backseat door and pulls out a tarp which he unfolds over the back of the truck, ushering the dog to get out of there, as he secures it down, so as to ensure nobody steals anything.

The dog looks curiously into the car, where Nathaniel is waking up from a long, well deserved nap and barks gently at the child, As soon as Clint is done with the tarp, he moves to unfasten his son and takes him in his arms, before shutting the car door with his foot and locking the vehicle with his free hand. The dog follows them cheerily as he walks across the parking lot.

He’s still got his knife fastened to his thigh, and some of the looks some of the other people are giving him make him want to set Nathaniel down, but there’s no way he’s letting his kid go. For some reason, Nathaniel seems to feel the same thing, and doesn’t fuss about wanting to be put down. He stays put in his father’s arms as they cross the lot, and when they make it into the Walmart, the sounds inside remind Clint of those of a prison. 

There’s screaming and some shrieking, and the sounds of glass breaking and people walking across broken glass and it feels like nails on a chalkboard. Clint kisses his son’s forehead, before putting his forehead against the spot he just kissed. 

“Nate, honey, I need you to close your eyes,” he says, quietly, and his kid, his three year old amazingly blonde kid, closes his eyes and puts his head against his father’s neck, to keep himself from seeing whatever was going to happen. “We’re going to do some grocery shopping, but I need you to stay quiet, can you do that for me?”

He hears his son give back a whimper as an answer, and Clint enters the shop with his eyes flaring around looking for potential threats. There’s a group of boys in the far end of the shop putting soft drinks into a cart, and as far as Clint can tell, they’ve broken into some of the liqueur cabinets.

Clint goes straight to the aisle with weapons and looks at the different options. Someone’s already been there before him and taken some of the handguns and bigger shotguns, but he finds a rifle on the top shelf, sitting Nathaniel down behind the ‘employee only’ counter. The dog is sitting next to his son, making sure nobody gets close.

Finding a hunting bag, Clint fills it with whatever he can find of ammunition and guns, finding smaller ones and three brand new hunting knives. He finds a grindstone as well, and right before he’s about to throw the bag across his shoulder, he notices the hunting arrow tips behind the counter, and he picks some of them, throwing them into the bag before zipping it shut. 

He throws it across his shoulder and picks up his son again, before heading out to get some food from the chaotic aisles of the supermarket. He hears something break in the aisle next to him and takes a deep breath, asking his son to be quiet. 

For a couple of seconds, there's no sound at all. Even the dog is quiet, as if it knows by now that it needs to. Clint moves quietly, the bag filled with weapons dangling at his side, the weapons rattling inside the fabric as he moves, and when he makes it out of the aisle, three things happen at once:

One of the boys that were looting for alcohol jumps towards him with a knife, the dog jumps towards another boy that's coming at him with a gun and Clint gets smacked in the back of the head by a third person. The ground is slippery, whoever made it to the supermarket then had made a mess by breaking bottles in their rush to get their prizes, and Clint almost loses his balance, Nathaniel shrieking as he does. However, Clint's knife is out of the holster as soon as he's gained his balance back, and he knocks the first boy in the face with the hilt, turning around to find the dog biting down on one of the other boy's leg, biting and breaking, by the sound of it. By now Nathaniel is crying out loud, and Clint sweeps to the side as the last boy shoots towards him and misses by over three feet. Clint uses his momentum to slide on the wet floor and knocks the third boy over, before swiftly moving towards the dog whose face and muzzle is now drenched in blood as he sees the boy with the knife has slashed at him several times. 

Clint knocks the boy unconscious with the hilt of his knife again and the dog starts starling at the boy almost as soon as that happens, before moving out of the way to follow when Clint moves towards the food aisle. 

Something drips into Clint's eye as he does, and looking down at his hand he realizes they're bloodied than he thought they would be. Nathaniel is peeking up from the crook of Clint's shoulder where he was hiding his face, and there's blood on his son's face too. Turning around, Clint walks over to one of the make-up and beauty products aisles to find a mirror, which he holds up to his face to look at the damage done to him. There's a deep gash across his forehead, and only then does he realize that he’s been stabbed, as a knife is poking out of the side of his bicep. They'd almost hit Nathaniel, but he hadn't noticed. 

The dog whimpers, then, Clint realizes, and he quickly surveys the situation: he finds some cotton pads, some mouthwash, and some menstrual pads. He knows they're good to keep someone from bleeding out from a wound. 

“Hey, buddy,” he says, as he sets Nathaniel down in the middle of the aisle and looks him in the eye. “I'm going to clean this up, okay?”

“You've got blood on your face, daddy,” Nathaniel replies, before looking at the dog. “And Lucky has blood on his face too.”

Clint watches the golden retriever sit next to Nathaniel, one of its eyes almost completely closed and bleeding. It takes the breath out of Clint, as he quietly pulls open the cotton pads, then rips the sealing plastic of the mouth wash. He'll go to the medical aisle later to find some more items he will need on his trip across the country. 

“I know, sweetie,” Clint mutters, as he’s wiping off the blood on Nathaniel’s face, quickly, before pouring the mouthwash over a shirt he’s pulled off a rack, and washing his face in it. He can feel the chlorhexidine affecting the cut on his face, and when he’s sure he’s got the most of it off - because of the blood stain on the shirt, as he pulls it off - he looks over at the dog who’s still sitting there and watching them, tongue lolling out of its mouth as if it hadn’t just gotten its eye poked out with a knife.

“C’m’ere,” Clint says, and the dog immediately jumps forward to sit closer to them. Nathaniel watches carefully as the animal moves, and when Clint puts out his hand to protect the other eye from the mouth wash, the dog moves back violently. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Clint mutters, before crawling slightly forward to be within a better reach of the dog. “Imma clean this for you, yeah? Just, stay put, it’s gonna hurt a little, I’m sorry, but see, here, if I hold you like this, you won’t feel a thing at all, it’s all fine, look-”

The dog tries to pull away as Clint pours some of the liquid onto its face, but Clint is holding him solidly against his chest, and before the dog knows it, Clint’s done cleaning the large gash. 

“We gotta find you a name, buddy,” Clint starts, and Nathaniel’s head perks up. He’s got tear stains on his cheeks, and had put his hand on his face, because there’s blood smeared on it again, and Clint wants to scream. This is no place for a kid. And they’ve still got to get fresh food and some more things to bring with them on the road to New York. “You got an idea?” he asks his son, who nods, sniffling as he does so.

“His name is Lucky,” Nathaniel proclaims, as if there is absolutely no doubt. Looking at the dog, Clint now realizes that he got the same eye poked out as Lucky had, back when he’d saved Clint from the tracksuit mafia. Nathaniel has seen pictures of Lucky in pictures books and he sits on the living room shelf, so of course he’d think that this dog was the other dog… So Clint smiles.

“His name is Lucky.”

* * *

Nathaniel and Lucky are sleeping in the back seat. 

Lucky’s head is on Nathaniel’s lap, and Nathaniel’s hand is clutching one of Lucky’s ears while his head is slowly falling forward, caught by gravity as sleep seems to have gotten deeper.

Clint is driving in the middle of the road - there’s not a lot of other people on it by now. They’d waited for nightfall before going on the road, Clint thought that it would be safer for them to travel by night, what with the lights being out and the roads being half abandoned.

He’s choosing to avoid the large motorways, so as to avoid large conglomerations of people. If they need to make a run for it, he knows he can just cut across a field in the large four wheel drive truck he’s currently sitting in, and that makes him feel safer. That and the shotgun he’s got on the passenger’s seat, as well as the hand gun lying in his lap.

He’s been thinking about what happened - he had talked to some of the people he found in Waverly who had survived whatever had happened, but it seemed that all of it had happened within the same couple of seconds. 

They all talked about people suddenly disappearing, and cars and busses and trucks and someone even mentioned the local rescue helicopter crashing in an open field out of town, as it was on assignment to help out in a car crash that had happened earlier that day. The police officers Clint had talked to had gotten word over from Cedar Falls and from Shell Rock, and some of them had taken the drive down to Waterloo to hear if they had news.

But so far, it would seem that nobody knew exactly what had happened, and it bothered Clint.

He hated not knowing.

Both hands on the wheel, the window slightly open so as to get some fresh air into the car to keep him awake, he thought about things.

If Nick had activated the Captain Marvel pager, something that they had only jokingly set up in the middle of the 1990s back when Clint was 25 years younger than he is today, then it meant that whatever had happened, had fucked up the whole world.

He hasn’t heard from anyone outside of Iowa, because the network services are still off. It’s been almost 12 hours since the Event happened, and not knowing is killing him. Every now and then, he pulls over and tries to get any sort of signal on the radio, but so far, all he’s got is people asking the same questions as he wants to ask: what happened? Is there anybody out there? Is there someone listening? What happened?

Aside from the looters in Walmart, he hasn’t met anyone out for his life or that of his kid. He helped a couple and their son out of the way when they waved him down, pulling them out of the field they’d gotten themselves into when trying to avoid an oncoming car. He’d also heard someone ask for help, because their water taps had run out, or become contaminated with something, and he’d brought them one of the gallons of water he’d taken from Walmart, before moving on.

They’ve passed a couple of diners, with the lights switched on. He didn’t stop to ask if electricity had come back or if it was a back-up generator, because there had been too many cars out front for him to get the attention. He doesn’t want to be recognized in a crowd. He knows there are people out there, in the outback of the fly over states, that know there’s an Avenger amongst them.

And, just like in any case of a public team of heroes, there were those who thought they were all liars and beggars, that they were monsters, that they didn’t do their job well enough and… Well. Knowing that apparently, as far as Clint can’t tell, something random seemingly washed out half of the human population?

He isn’t ready to fight anyone trying to come at him for not doing his job.

He thinks about Carol, and what she could potentially do. As far as Clint is concerned, there aren’t any ways to turn back time - there was a mind stone, that much he knows, and there’s a space stone, and there’s a power stone, Thor mentioned, but he’s pretty sure that time is one of the only things that you can’t touch.

If you could, how come that there had been so many great tragedies through time? Who decides what to use it for and when?

No, time has got to be something that can’t be turned back.

He refuses to believe it. Because if he could- he doesn’t even want to try to think about what he’d do. Would he go back to that moment when Loki stepped through the portal of the Tesseract and stole his life and mind away? Would he go back to the Battle of New York and change the course of history?

Would he go back to the time when his mother and father crashed into a tree, killing them both instantly and orphaning him and his brother?

Would he go back to that time the Swordsman cut the line under him, and made him fall from 20 feet in the air, down into the sands under a circus tent, leaving him broken, bruised and battered for months?

Would he go back and change those things?

He takes a moment to reflect on it, as the lines in front of him, in the middle of the road blur slightly. He swerves a bit, before eventually, pulling over when he sees the next patch of open road. There are no forests here, and he’ll have to rest in the car, in the middle of a bunch of fields. He doesn’t like being so exposed, but he has to. 

If he falls asleep behind the wheel, it won’t matter whether or not he makes it to New York. No, Clint thinks, he has to make it back to Bed Stuy, to find whatever it was that Nick had hid away from him. To find that specific protocol. If Clint is the last senior SHIELD agent, it means he’s the Director of SHIELD now. And if he’s the director of that… Well, he can’t allow himself to fall asleep behind the wheel of a truck in the middle of nowhere.

Even though he kind of wants to. 

He thinks about Laura, and about Lila and Cooper. They disappeared, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He doesn’t even know what happened. It’s been 12 hours, and he has more questions than answers, and frankly, it’s pissing him off. But he’ll have to rest.

He can’t allow himself to fall asleep behind the wheel. He has too many things to do. He’s got too many responsibilities. He needs to figure out what happened. 

He’s got work to do.

* * *

The next morning, Clint wakes up to ice on the windshield and on the windows. Thankfully, he’d remembered to pack up some blankets and the a sleeping bag he’d thrown on top of Nathaniel before going to sleep himself, wrapped up in the woolly contraption. His breath crystallizes as he breathes, opening his eyes to the darkness outside. His wristwatch tells him it’s still before 6 in the morning, but he’s awake within the couple of seconds it takes him to realize that there’s something on the hood of the car. There’s a thin layer of snow on the car as well, on top of the ice on the windshield, and he realizes that there’s snow on the road around the car as well.

He watches the black mass on the hood, and as he slowly moves his arm out of the sleeping bag, the black mass suddenly turns around and a set of two yellow eyes blink at him. He can see them through the ice, and realizes slowly that it’s a bobcat. It’s looking at him, as if it knows exactly what’s going through his mind, unafraid of the human beings in the car.

Clint doesn’t say anything for a couple of seconds and just takes in the light of the moon on the fur of the wild cat, before turning around to some shuffling on the backseat. Lucky has woken up too, probably disturbed by Clint moving himself, and is now watching the bobcat as well.

“It’s just a cat,” he tells Lucky, who props his head back down onto Nathaniel’s lap. The dog has kept Nathaniel warm during the night, and his son hadn’t even woken up to call out for his mother, sister or brother. He’d fallen asleep, lulled by the sound of the engine, and hadn’t moved. Clint had thought about stopping to make him eat something proper, but the apple juice brick that Nathaniel had downed during the early minutes of the car ride towards New York had led to some crackers, and from there, Clint hadn’t really cared.

If his son wasn’t awake to complain, he could think about the best course of action. And, by the time he’d stopped to sleep for a bit, Clint had come to the conclusion that he needed to figure out how to get in touch with whatever SHIELD agents were left standing.

He yawns finally, and as he pulls the sleeping bag open, the bobcat skitters away, off the hood of the car and into the field by the side of the road. Clint turns the key in the ignition, and the engine huffs once, then he tries again as some of the lights on the dashboard indicate the engine isn’t hot enough, and then on the third try the engine splutters on, and air starts blowing out of the fans on the dashboard.

The sudden jerk wakes Nathaniel who moans, and Clint looks over his shoulder, before turning completely around, one knee in each front row seat. “Hey, buddy,” he says, unlocking Nathaniel’s seatbelt as Lucky ruffs at him for waking him properly. Lifting his youngest under the arms, Clint pulls him to the front seat and sits him down there, before bending forward again and unstrapping the child seat from the middle back seat, and pulls it in front of him, to the front seat. “You’re gonna sit next to daddy today,” he says, as he picks Nathaniel up in one arm, putting the child seat down in the driver’s seat, and maneuvering around so as to put down the seat and Nathaniel in the proper position in the front seat.

By the looks of it, the roads he’s been travelling on were quiet, and he felt safer with Nathaniel right next to him. Nathaniel doesn’t say much, though he does call out for his mother once, but Clint kisses his forehead and tells him to go back to sleep after stroking his head and adjusting his sweater. The heat knocks Nathaniel out cold soon as well, and when Clint is sure that his son is sitting comfortably in the car, he moves out of the way, and taps the floor in front of the passenger seat, inviting Lucky to jump to the front of the car too.

He sewed Lucky’s eye shut after Nathaniel had fallen asleep, in the light of the parking lot at Walmart, holding him down while he did so. He’d hated every second of it - wrapping the belt around Lucky’s mouth to keep him from biting had been the worst thing he’d ever done. But then again, Clint had helped his father, in his young days, strap animals down in his father’s slaughterhouse, so he knew how to keep them from moving.

Lucky hesitates, yawns again, but gives in to Clint’s invitation when Clint offers him one of the crackers he’s shared with Nathaniel, and soon, Clint is back in the driver’s seat, seatbelt on, and puts on the indicator to tell any oncoming traffic that he’s leaving the rest stop. 

While he’s been moving his son and the dog around inside, the heat has melted the ice off of the wind shield, and he can see that the fields around the car have been covered in snow, and some of the naked trees shuffle in the wind. The road hasn’t been cleared, although some patches of it are still naked due to some of the salt still working, in spite of the snowfall.

He turns out into the road, and begins his drive towards New York. He’ll keep avoiding the big highways and other motorways, as he wants to avoid being seen, and if he can, he’ll stop for rest in some of the cabins and other State Parks he knows they’ll cross. 

“Daddy, where’s mommy?” Nathaniel asks, sleepily, still not fully awake, and Clint looks over at his son, but goes back to watching the road almost immediately after that.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but we’re going to go to Uncle Tony’s house, and maybe he will have some answers there.”

“In the supermarket- the big boys-”

Nathaniel pauses, and pulls out his hands from under the blanket, and looks at his small nails, while he thinks. Clint gives him the time to think, as he moves down a side road that will run parallel to one of the bigger roads through Iowa, down towards Missouri.

“They were mean,” Nathaniel finally says, as if unable to find the words to express it. Clint smiles, sadly, as he rubs his temple. He can still feel the cut that he’d tried to sew shut in the rearview mirror after Nathaniel had fallen asleep. 

“Yes, they were. It was because they were afraid,” he explains, calmly. “They were afraid because something happened, just like mommy and Delilah and Cooper disappeared yesterday, remember?” he continues, quietly, still driving down in the middle of the road. There is no oncoming traffic, and he’d rather stay in the middle of the lane than on the right side of it. If an animal or someone decides to cross into the headlights, he’ll get more reaction time to swerve out of the way. He speaks again after that: “Sometimes, boys, when they’re in a group, they do something stupid. They think that because they’re in a group, it means that they can do whatever they want, but that also means that sometimes what they do is silly. That’s why they used a knife and they tried to hit me.”

Nathaniel gazes down at his hands, and Clint feels his heart break, because a three year old shouldn’t have to battle with this. He shouldn’t have to try to understand whatever had happened - he was three. He was supposed to build snowmen and go feed the chickens while giggling about whatever joke Clint could think about that morning, and he was supposed to laugh at Clint trying to eat a soup with a fork instead of a spoon and tell him ‘no, daddy, you can’t eat soup with a fork!’ with a big grin on his face.

Nathaniel puts out his hand, and Lucky lifts his head so that it fits within the palm of Nathaniel’s hand. “Is that why Lucky protected us?”

Clint nods, while keeping an eye on the road, and is just about to answer when some sort of static frizzles through the radio. He immediately lets go of the thought he was about to give Nathaniel, about dogs and loyalties, and Golden retrievers protecting children and about responsibilities, when he turns on the dial of the radio to try and catch whatever just tried to come through on the airwaves.

He scrolls through all of the channels, until something crackles back to life and he finally discerns something understandable through the static: “disappearances of ------ from ------ Kingdom of Wakanda ---- help ----- Pepper Potts is ------ New York ------ martial law is enforced after disa----- Thaddeus Ross-----”

Clint frowns, then mutters a quiet “Fuck,” to which Nathaniel replies with a “you said a bad word!” which almost makes Clint smile again.

If they’re talking about martial law being enforced, it means that the highest state of government has been overthrown or overtaken by the military. And, if Clint knows anything about what he just heard, Thaddeus Ross apparently hasn’t disappeared from the face of the Earth, and is probably trying to figure out what to do of the United States - and seemingly the rest of the world.

“Someone is trying to do something good, but the last time they tried that, I went to prison,” Clint explains, and Nathaniel looks over at him, with that definite toddler deadpan frown that means that he has absolutely no idea what’s going on. Even though his son is articulate and three years old and knows how to do rhetoric, there are still a number of things that he doesn’t know how to express.

The radio keeps on crackling words through, but Clint almost swerves out of the road when his phone suddenly starts beepind and shaking, the buzzing making it dance across the dashboard. He tries to catch it one time, keeping his hand on the wheel as he does so, but the phone makes it all the way to the opposite side of the windshield. Clint curses again, and this time, Nathaniel asks what’s going on again.

“You know how sometimes, when we’re out in the barn and the phone doesn’t work?” he says, as he pulls over to the side of the road, “Well, the phone hasn’t worked since yesterday morning, so I haven’t heard from anyone-”

“Not even mom?” Nathaniel interrupts.

“Not even mom, but now it seems it caught some signal, which is what makes it say that there are messages and lets you go onto the internet, so everything is coming in in one big message. Kind of like when Lila comes home from school and she has so many things to explain that she just sits and talks for fifteen minutes without stopping for air?” Clint explains, and Nathaniel laughs at that.

“Is it from mom?” Nathaniel asks, and Clint finally catches the phone after unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching over to look at it. There’s missed calls from several numbers, but the ones that matter have also texted.

He lets it update, as he answers his son, putting back his belt, “No, mom hasn’t written. She probably doesn’t have network where she is right now,” he says, hoping that Nathaniel doesn’t ask where she is, because Clint doesn’t have the answer to that. He hasn’t even had the time to think about what happened- about- about how they disappeared.

He looks at the messages flooding in, 32 text messages from Steve, Natasha and even from his handler from the FBI assigned to keep him under house arrest, and looks at the list of missed calls. There’s been a few, and he wants to curse when he sees that none of the phone numbers that have tried to contact him have been either Fury’s, Maria’s or Barney’s. 

Barney hasn’t tried to call him, and that throws Clint more off than anything else. If he disappeared too- he isn’t sure he’s ready to think about it. Nathaniel is looking at him expectantly, and he doesn’t know if he can take it. Trying to explain to his son why he’s crying. Not that he doesn’t want to show it - he’s cried in front of his children before, when they watch cartoons and other movies, so it’s not that. But if he starts crying, if he lets the mourn start, if he lets the pain of losing Laura come through, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to make it all the way to New York and to figure out what the next moves are.

He just isn’t.

So he looks at the phone and thinks about whether or not he should answer.

“Who is it? Is it auntie Nat?” Nathaniel asks, as if he was reading Clint’s mind, and Clint smiles. Lucky’s ears have perked up too, maybe interested in the phone and in the idea of something other happening.

“Yes, auntie Nat is alive,” Clint replies, and suddenly a weight falls off of his shoulders and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding - he had been too afraid to think about whether or not Natasha had gone, if Steve was alive, that seeing their names in the caller ID and on his voicemail suddenly made him feel less alone and more alive. If they were here, then maybe he could figure this out. “And so is uncle Steve, but they are just asking me to reply,” he states, quietly.

“Well,” Nathaniel says, looking up at the ceiling as if he’s giving it the best amount of thought he can, “mommy doesn’t like when she calls you and you don’t answer.”

That’s not helpful at all, Clint thinks, because it’s not relevant, but it does make sense. Natasha is asking him if he’s alive. If he’s okay. There’s a status update from her as well, where she sums up the situation, but asks him to call so she can explain. Apparently, they were in Wakanda when it happened - who knew, a farming nation in the middle of Africa held some of the most technologically advanced materials and research in the whole world, and they had never known.

“I don’t think I should answer,” Clint says, though, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t- I don’t know if I can tell her that mommy’s- that mommy isn’t here anymore.” He pauses, as he thinks about how he should explain it to Nathaniel, how the grief of losing her to seemingly nothing is breaking him apart inside and how he wants to stop the car and cry into the steering wheel until his soul feels numb and until there’s nothing left inside of him, but he can’t. Because his three year old son survived what Natasha calls the Snap, and explains happened when someone called Thanos gathered all the Infinity Stones and used them.

He doesn’t want to know. He wants to know why. Why Laura? Why Lila? Why Cooper? Why Adam? Why not the other neighbors? Why not him? Why not Thaddeus Ross? Was there something they’d done, that had caused the choice to fall on them? Was there something that they had done to deserve surviving?

Natasha doesn’t mention a lot of other people, though she says that T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, is gone too. As is Sam, apparently, and Bucky Barnes. However, as Clint scrolls through some of the 32 text messages that have ticked in, he sees a name he wasn’t prepared to see.

He hits the brakes, and it almost propels Lucky out of the front seat, and the dog barks at him angrily when the car finally comes to a complete stop.

“Daddy!” Nathaniel had shrieked, and now Clint can feel the tears welling up in his eyes.

“You know how mommy’s gone, Nate?” Clint asks, as he sniffles, barely unable to contain the tears that are forming in the corners of his eyes. He throws the phone away, back to the front of the dashboard, as if it would erase whatever it was that he had just read. “Wanda’s gone too.”

It hurts him so much inside that his heart breaks apart even more - his brain is reacting as if he was actually, physically being ripped apart inside. 

She wasn’t supposed to fight like this!

He stops the engine of the car, unbuckles his seat belt, opens the door and slams it shut as he takes a couple of steps away from the car. He can hear Lucky barking and Nathaniel screaming for him, but he can’t. He can’t sit in the car right now, he just can’t. He puts his hands on his hips and looks up to the sky that seems to be mourning with him. It’s grey, dark and cold, and he barely feels the cold winter morning of Iowa as he lets out a loud sob and cry.

The sun is tipping out from behind the horizon and is illuminating everything in a golden light, but all Clint wants to do is fall to his knees and cry. So he does.

He hides his face in his hands, feels the cold and the ice of the ground against his pants and against his chest, feeling the despair and violation he felt when Loki invaded his mind. He sees Laura’s face flashing in his memories, thinks back to the last words he told her, that he had to go help Wanda and Natasha in Wakanda even though he promised, he thinks back to how she was angry with him and she went to take a shower before taking the kids to school, how they had stayed up the whole night discussing Tony’s kidnapping and Steve calling to ask him if he knew where Wanda was.

He lets out a scream, a despairing scream, as he feels it run through his entire body, his heart aching, his heart and soul throbbing for something to tell him what had happened. Natasha was fine, Steve was fine, but Wanda was not. Vision was not. Laura wasn’t. 

Cooper hadn’t gotten to school that morning to show off his homework that Clint had helped him with.

Lila hadn’t made it to the front row of her English class to listen to her teacher read aloud from the first Harry Potter book.

They’d been turned to piles of ash and were still lying on the floor of their home, where Clint had left them, afraid to touch, afraid to believe, afraid to give up.

Laura was gone. She’d disappeared while she was under the shower head.

There was no trace of her, but the perfume in the shirts he’d packed and in the small things he could see in the car. The extra sunglasses in the glove compartment. The little coins under the gear stick, so that they would never need to find something to put in a shopping cart.

He screams to the skies and asks why. 

Lucky’s barks are too loud, and he has to stop himself from falling completely to the ground as he hears Nathaniel screaming too. He left him in the car. 

He left his three year old son in the car, locked in by the seatbelt with a dog he barely knows. 

He can’t break like this. He just can’t.

He has to keep going. He has to. 

So, he pushes himself back up. He swipes the pants from the dirt, mud, salt and snow he’d fallen into, and walks back to the car. He opens the passenger door, and Lucky leaps out and growls at him angrily, before stomping off into the field they’ve stopped by. Clint unbuckles his crying son from his carseat and craddles him against his chest.

“I’m sorry, Nate,” he whispers into his son’s ears, as his son screams into his ears, making his hearing aids go off. “I’m so sorry,” he continues, feeling his own tears fall down his face, as Nathaniel shrieks even louder.

He can’t handle it, but he has to. 

He stands there in the cold, rocking his son back and forth until the sun is higher on the horizon. Until Lucky comes back, muddy and one eye looking at him expectedly for a treat. He stands there until Nathaniel asks him if they can have something to eat. He stands there until his heartbeat is calm again, and he decides not to allow himself to break down like this again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you thought!  
> I had a lot of fun with the whole immediate consequences of the Snap, and I can't wait to look further forward in time and see how that would affect the whole world.
> 
> Comment, cry, scream and yell at me, please?  
> I'm at 20k on NaNo today (November 8th), and I hope to make it to the halfway point within the end of the week!


	3. One day after the snap.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawkeye has reached New York - but the city seems to bring more questions than answers, after the Event. Will he be able to navigate the blurry clues that Nick Fury left him, to take command of SHIELD? Will he be able to save those he needs to save? And, more importantly: is there anyone from his family left, other than Nathaniel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm excited to introduce some of the characters from New York that Clint absolutely knows, as well as some other nifty ladies <3   
> So many ladies in this chapter! And, also one special Lieutenant.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy <3

New York brings life. And colour. And also, more noise and chaos than Clint was expecting.

The city is buzzing, even before he makes it to Bed-Stuy. There’s a changed atmosphere hanging, the streetlights are off, even after dark, and nobody really roams the streets. Some people are huddled together in Times Square demanding answer and protesting the military coup Thaddeus Ross stood behind, when the President and Vice President both disappeared as piles of ash, in the Oval Office and Air Force One respectively.

The presidential plane had emergency landed seventeen miles outside the Pentagon, asking for help and assistance from anyone who could help. But it would seem that whatever the Event was, it held no account for the rich and the poor, as everyone had lost someone. Even the richest, no matter what they thought.

There’s a parking garage near his old apartment building, and he gets in by giving the man watching who gets in and out some food. Clint hadn’t even offered money - the bag of food that he’s been keeping on the backseat for instances like this has proved more efficient than money. In any case, Clint wraps a headscarf around his head to avoid detection by the surveillance cameras that are set up in every corner of the parking lot, before unbuckling his son, putting a leash on Lucky, and throwing some bags and backpacks onto his shoulders. 

“Nate, you’re going to have to walk,” he says, as his son stops in front of him, arms raised, demanding he be carried, and even the whine that escapes his son’s lips isn’t enough to make him stop. “Buddy, you’re a big boy now, you can hold the leash, yeah?” he continues, as a way to maybe sweeten the deal. As soon as Lucky’s leash is secured within Nathaniel’s grasp, Clint locks the car, and crosses the parking garage.

The neon lights are flickering, and some of the cars look like they haven’t moved in ages. It makes him feel better about it, because it means there are less people likely to go down here and either siphon the gas out of his car, or steal it. He holds the scarf up above his mouth and nose as they enter the entrance hall, and is surprised to find the elevator working. He chooses to call for the elevator instead of climbing the stairs - Nathaniel won’t be able to make the 16 story climb, even though Clint isn’t sure he could either. He’s out of shape, and he has been for a while. It pisses him even more off, because maybe if he had been in the fight that he’s figured out happened in Wakanda, maybe his retirement would have cost him the upper hand in hand to hand combat. 

The elevator dings, and opens, and Lucky growls at the two silhouettes that climb out of it, but they don’t comment on the dog, the toddler and the masked man waiting to get into it. Especially when there’s a scope hanging out of one of the bags, and the dog has an eye sewn shut. 

Clint guides Nathaniel into the elevator, and requests for the 16th floor, looking up at the security camera indented in the upper corner of the cubicle. He turns around, and as he drops something deliberately, causing Nathaniel to bend forward because “You dropped this!”, Clint knocks the camera out with a flick of his wrist and the hilt of his knife.

“Oh, thank you, Nathaniel!” Clint answers innocently, as he picks up the wallet he’s dropped on the floor. The elevator skids to a halt, and opens up. Clint pulls out a keychain from his back pocket, and lets Lucky guide Nathaniel down the hall, as he walks to what looks like a rusty door. He inserts the key into the lock, and when the handle turns, Lucky turns around and trots into the apartment, almost dragging Nathaniel behind him.

Inside, everything looks like it should. It’s exactly as he’d left it, back when he had decided to move out. Back when Nick Fury had offered him and Laura a house in Iowa. He notices that there’s shoes that aren’t his by the door, but recognizes them as Barney’s. There’s an extra pair of jackets on the coat hanger too, and judging by the shape and size, they’re Laura’s and her sister’s. 

“Nate, look, this is where mom and I lived, back when we were young and in love,” Clint comments, shutting the door behind him and putting down the several bags he’s carrying. He locks the chain on the door, bolts it, and moves to open the blinds slightly so as to let some sunlight into the apartment. 

The fridge is off, there’s no dial tone on the phone on the wall, but Clint is pleasantly surprised to find that there’s running water coming out of the faucet, and even hot water coming out of the showerhead, when he lets it run for a while. Nathaniel needs a shower, he’s been sitting in the car for almost 24 hours, if Clint counts the moment he left until the moment he got out of the car minutes ago. 

Lucky walks around the flat, as Nathaniel climbs onto the couch, his backpack still on his back. He struggles for a bit to get it off his back, but eventually manages, opens the zipper, and pulls out a teddy bear that Clint recognizes as one of his favorite travel buddies. He hadn’t even realized it was in the bag. That’s just a witness to how little Clint has paid attention to anything that’s happened since the day before.

Lucky ruffs at something, sniffing the carpet and the floorboards, and then finally makes it to a dog bed, pushes at it with his muzzle a couple of times, as if to try whether it’s usable, and then finally plops down on it. Clint pauses at that, and laughs.

“What’s funny?” Nathaniel interjects, looking up from his teddy bear, as Clint kneels in front of some of the bags he’s brought. Clint smiles.

“Do you remember Lucky from the pictures at home? That used to be his bed. He used to eat pizza off the table that’s right in front of you, and sometimes, when I fell asleep because I worked too much, he’d lick me in the face as I was sleeping on the couch right there,” he says, as he opens the bag containing the weapons, and goes through them, laying them out on the floor - making sure the safety is off and that they’re unloaded as he does.

Even though Nathaniel knows not to touch Clint’s weapons, he is just three years old, and there’s no way in hell Clint is risking an accident. Not right now. Clint looks around the flat, and sees some of the things he’d left behind, as well as the blackboard paint on the side of the fridge, where there’s a message in chalk he hadn’t noticed.

There’s no date on it, but he recognizes Barney’s writing, and deduces that it’s from at least a year ago. “Uncle Barney’s been here,” he says, his heart shrinking at the thought of Barney not having given any sign of life yet. But for now, this will do.

The old flat that he lived in, during his rookie SHIELD days and his steady climb through the levels, will be their home while he seeks out the different people he needs to talk to. He needs to go to Fury’s old flat and find the protocols they’ve set up. Clint looks at one of the bags that he’s carried with him since Waverly, that’s padlocked, and that he doesn’t really want to get into, but he knows what it contains. There’s a compound bow on the floor, next to some guns and the hunting rifle, but he knows that the bag and the wooden sheath contains something else, something that he hasn’t worn in years.

It’s how SHIELD found him, because he’d left trails of bodies behind. It was easier to be whatever that was, than be Clint. Wearing a mask and calling himself a hero. When there was nothing left, after the army, after he’d been dismissed because of his ‘heroic deed’ and given a Medal of Honor for his service, after he’d lost his hearing for the military, there had been the vigilanteism and the self rightousness.

He’d almost lost Laura to the anger and the rage, but she’d helped him through. Nick Fury had shown up one day, in the doorframe of this very flat, and asked Clint if he didn’t want to do something else with his life.

Nathaniel’s shriek of pleasure as Lucky seemingly comes over to snatch the teddy bear out of his hands pulls Clint out of his thoughts. He walks over, crossing the living room, and gets Lucky to let go of the toy, and looks out of the window. There are lights on in some of the other buildings, so there must be a generator of electricity somewhere. His eyes automatically go to the previous Stark and Avengers-Tower, in the middle of the city, even his eyes can’t avert it. Stark had sold it some months before, but Clint didn’t know to whom. 

The name Osborn had been among the bidders, but he wasn’t sure who it had gone to in the end.

Maybe it was Bishop, for all he knew. Laura’s parents were rich as well, but they’d had a falling out years ago, about her marriage to a has been military soldier with no future ahead of him. The year after the Battle of New York, Clint had gotten a Christmas card from the Bishops, thanking him for his service. Laura had thrown it into the fireplace and watched as the plastic paper had bubbled and fizzled until it had disintegrated. 

He ruffles Nathaniel’s head, as he takes a walk around the apartment again, checking the windows and the walls for any signs of intrusion, but there’s nothing that indicates that the apartment has been tampered with, other than dirty clothes and… a ball of bloodied clothes, thrown into the corner of one of the rooms. Clint rolls his eyes and mutters a curse at Barney for not cleaning up after himself, but picks up the clothes and goes to find a plastic bag under the sink to hide them in. It’ll make it easier to get rid of the evidence.

Finally, Clint pulls out a banana from the food bag and sits down next to Nathaniel, who expresses his interest in the banana by letting go of the teddy bear completely. Lucky’s head perks up from the dog bed again, but Clint points his finger at him. “Here,” Clint says, as he breaks open the banana, and rips off the upper part of it, handing it to Nathaniel. 

Nathaniel’s hands - and Clint’s, for that matter - aren’t clean, but he doesn’t care about hygiene right now. He’s hungry, he’s tired, and he’s finally allowing himself to calm down a little bit. Sitting here, eating a banana with his youngest, as the rest of the world seems to be collapsing on himself?

That’s about as much as he can cope with right now.

Right up until he remembers that he needs to make the bed in the bedroom, and that he needs to move some of the furniture around so that Nathaniel can sleep between him and the wall. There’s no baby bed in the flat, because him and Laura had moved out before Cooper was born. 

He huffs at the thought, and breaks off a piece of the banana, munching on it in sync with his youngest, thinking about what tomorrow will bring them. 

The sound of a jet zooming across the sky pulls him out of his thought, and he closes his eyes. He needs to sleep. He wants to sleep. But he needs to bathe Nathaniel, and take a shower himself before he can do that. So he sets off of the couch, leaving the rest of the banana in Nathaniel’s hands, and goes to prepare the bathroom for use, after what seems like several weeks of no activity in the flat.

* * *

It’s difficult to get around New York without getting caught. But Clint has done it before, and he’ll do it again - it’s been two days since the Event that caused a major shift worldwide, and Clint needs to find someone in New York. She hasn’t replied to his phone calls, so instead of taking the time to locate her, he commandeers one of the cars from the parking garage that’s been covered in enough dust to make sure it hadn’t moved in a while, and headed out of the city.

There’s a curfew in place, as some of the night lights weren’t working, but he’d managed to sneak out of the city before the crack of dawn and before everyone would start wandering back onto the streets.

It feels like some sort of war happened - the city is in shambles, and just like in Waverly, there’s overturned cars that haven’t been moved, the subway is working more or less as it should, except there’s less cars going around the network. People are talking about the banks stopping working, and about how some of them have pulled out all their money at an ATM, because what if the ATMs stop working or they suddenly decide to commandeer all the cash?

He’d spoken to a young man, coming out of the parking lot, who’d noticed Nathaniel sitting in the passenger seat. He’d told Clint that he’d hidden all his life savings under his mattress, and that they’d be safe there.

Clint hasn’t really thought about it yet, because he’s always had a pile of cash readily available, but it makes sense. Without money, there’s no groceries. And by the looks of it, everyone has emptied the supermarkets for any kind of perishables and food in fear of the situation becoming worse, which means that the prices have skyrocketed and that there’s people out there, trying to find any sort of sustenance available. 

Thaddeus Ross has diverted some of the military towards accompanying delivery trucks into the city, and has set up a rationing system. Or tried to, at least, it’ll take a couple of days. Clint heard the announcement on the radio that morning, and the program that followed was what gave him the idea to go to the New Avengers headquarters, right outside New York City.

The news anchor had told the world and whoever listened that the reason why most of New York still had electric power was because Pepper Potts, of Stark Industries, had decided to open up the power grid that the arc reactor was powering, and had diverted some of the energy from there to the rest of the city. It meant that every single power outlet in the city was still able to deliver energy, that fridges and freezers and heaters and more were still working. 

Not every city in the world is that lucky, though, as power sources have been dwindling with the realization that there aren’t enough people to man the stations at the power stations. That morning, Clint had heard that one nuclear power plant in Montana had gone critical, before being powered down and cutting electrical supply in over ten thousand homes.

As he’s turning up the road towards the New Avengers’ facility, he thinks about what he’s going to tell Pepper. He needs to let her know that there’s a plan. That he’s the only hope SHIELD has of making this through. So, when he finally makes it to the entrance port and enters his code, one that Tony had asked him to set up, back when he was still an Avenger full time, and enters the facility, he looks more defeated.

Nathaniel is mumbling about wanting to use his father’s phone to watch the YouTube, but the connection hasn’t been good enough to stream video, until he made it to the Avengers facility. Tony had made sure that there’d always be enough power available, and the internet connection and wireless was always impeccable. Clint isn’t surprised that Tony, even when he wasn’t even around, still made sure that things worked like they should. Even better than they should.

There’s less people than he thought there would be here, and when he parks the car, gets out, and picks Nathaniel out of the car seat, it’s not anyone who comes to greet him. Pepper Potts is leading her and her assistant, Cameron Klein, towards him. She’s still walking around in those high heeled shoes and an impeccably tailored suit. 

“Oh my God, Clint! You’re alive!” is the greeting she chooses, as she picks up the pace to an almost run as she gets closer to him, and goes in for a hug, before realizing that Clint is carrying his youngest in his arms. “Oh, no- is that- is- does that mean that-” 

She can’t get the words out, though, and when Clint’s gaze meets hers, he knows that she knows. If he’s here with nobody else but Nathaniel, a toddler of three years, no wife, no other kids in tow, then… She looks at him, and Clint hates the looks she gives her - it’s too close to pity, but then it isn’t. He tries to smile, but fails and instead grimaces, when Nathaniel leans backwards and almost loses his balance in Clint’s arms.

“I’m not the only one who lost someone when- whatever- when that happened,” he manages, setting up Nathaniel on his arm again, and looking over at Klein. “Agent Klein, glad to see you’re still with us.” And not a pile of ash on the floor. He wants to add that, but he’s pretty sure that they all know what he means. He looks at Pepper, who has made eye contact with Nathaniel, who is suddenly playing shy.

“I don’t mean to keep you, Pepper, but I have some SHIELD business to-”

“Yes, Cameron here told me. He got a page from Director Fury when he rose in the ranks, and Hill tried to phone him before they-” she grimaces, unsure of what word to use and choses to just skip the descriptive, “so he knows. I helped him stay online by diverting power to the computers, so-”

“She knows too, Agent Barton. She knows the plan,” Klein interrupts. He mumbles something, rubs the back of his neck, and looks at Clint unsure of what to say, before the words sort of flow out on their own: “Or, well, you know- you’re not an Agent anymore, but, you’ve got the kid and the-”

“Don’t worry about that, don’t worry about him,” Clint says, adjusting Nathaniel on his arm. “Can we go inside? Nobody knows I’m in New York, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Smart,” Klein says, as they all turn towards the entrance of the facility, Nathaniel shyly waving at Klein, as if the younger agent is easier to connect with than Pepper. Nathaniel knows Pepper’s face from Facetime whenever they’d talk to Tony, but seems to have forgotten in the rush and in the confusion around his arrival here.

Once they’re inside the facility, behind closed doors, FRIDAY’s automatic voice activates: “Welcome home, Director Barton,” she says, and Clint already feels the cringe in his mind at the title. He was never supposed to get to this point, there was always supposed to be someone else instead of him - Nick, then Maria. Not him. At some point, Phil and Melinda had been under consideration, but they’d been sent away on another mission Nick hadn’t thought important enough to brief him on.

Clint supposes that now, he’s going to learn all about Nick’s secrets and missions and compartmentalizations. 

“Klein, brief me on the situation,” Clint says, as Pepper leads them forward. “What the hell happened?”

“It looks like some sort of energy surge exploded in Wakanda, and then immediately vanished from all recording devices, kind of like someone turned back time. At first, we thought it was an anomaly, but I went back and checked the signatures, and the Large Hadron Collider seems to have recorded a breach in some form of minuscule particle, but the scientists that are left can’t seem to agree on what it detected. One of them said,” Klein gesticulates, moving his hands around to try and explain what happened, “that it’s like for a short period of time, the briefest really, reality ceased to exist and suddenly came back to life. Selvig, who’s still here, by the way, looked at the recordings and came up with the idea that it was like rebooting the universe, but I’m not sure how that would work-”

“What happened in Wakanda? Do we know who is still alive?” Clint says, interrupting Klein’s monologue and looks at Pepper, who’s avoiding his gaze. “Do we have any news from Tony?”

Pepper shakes her head. “Ever since he disappeared on the ship, we haven’t heard anything. Klein and Agent 13 have gained access to some of NASA’s satellites, to scan the skies for any sort of signal from Tony but-” 

She pauses, and bites her lower lip. Clint knows. What if he didn’t survive the Event? Wherever he was, it seemed that the Event had had a far enough reach to make half of the astronauts on the International Space Station disappear, and they were about as far away from Earth as you could get.

“We know Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff, they’re still alive, as is the King’s sister, Shuri,” Klein comments. 

Clint sets Nathaniel down on the ground, and instead of standing, his son decides to sit at their feet, while Klein hands him a holoscreen with some information. It’s a set of readings, and it takes Clint a couple of seconds to decipher them.

“The King of Wakanda, T’Challa, is gone as well. Vision was destroyed by Thanos, they call him that, but I don’t know if it’s a code-name or not, but it seems that-”

“He sent Loki.”

Clint’s interrupted again, and this time, both Pepper and Cameron Klein look at him, surprised by what he just said.

“How did you-”

“When Loki put his scepter to my chest, something happened. I could feel the magic in the core, and I didn’t know it was a part of a bigger universe until after Tony and Banner created Vision. I’ve always felt it - I saw things, in the first couple of months after Loki. The magic would come back in waves,” he says, putting his hand to his chest, “And I felt something happen, the day before Tony went away on the spaceship. It was so powerful, like something had echoed through the very fabric of existence. I wouldn’t be surprised if Erik Selvig and Helen Cho both felt the same thing,” he continues, biting his lip. Nathaniel’s busy trying to figure out how to untie his father’s laces, so Clint decides to show them what he’s talking about.

He picks the edges of the grey shirt he’s wearing, and pulls him, revealing the scar that Helen Cho had fixed up, and then, in the middle of his chest, where the scepter had touched his heart, there’s a scar. It’s grown since then, as if it’s burning through his being slowly. Pepper puts her hand to her face, and Klein just… stares.

“You need to talk to Helen Cho and Jane Foster about this,” he says, letting down the shirt again, before swiping at the holoscreen, watching it with a furrowed brow. “Do we know if-”

“We’ve compiled a list of people of interest to SHIELD that haven’t disappeared, it should be right-” Klein takes the holoscreen out of Clint’s hands, presses three different buttons, and hands it back, “-here.”

Clint can see some names he knows on there, and some sort of relief floods his system. Agent Drew is on the list, as is Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster’s assistant, Betty Ross, Erik Selvig, Helen Cho - they’re all on there. He looks up from it, before speaking: “Have you heard from all of them?”

“Yes.” Pepper nods, as she takes a deep breath. “Immediately after the event, we dispatched all the people we could to help, and then we received word from Wakanda that something had transpired there. This Thanos guy, right before Tony went away, Stephen Strange, the ex-surgeon, came to find us in the park. He told us that the fate of the universe was a stake, and Banner showed up-”

“Banner, as in Bruce Banner? He showed up?” Clint interrupts, and looks over at Klein, who shrugs. “How?”

“He didn’t say, but he said that whatever this Thanos guy was, he’d be the end of everything we knew. So, Tony went ahead and followed him to wherever this Strange guy has a headquarter,” Pepper replies. Her phones has been buzzing for the last five minutes, but she hasn’t replied to a single one of them, preferring this conversation to whatever they would need. “They want to know if you’re alive,” she finally says, and Clint grimaces again. “Natasha’s asked several times if we’ve heard from you.”

“I haven’t- I can’t- I don’t know yet,” Clint stutters, as he sighs. “I need to figure out what Nick wanted to have me do, and I don’t know if Natasha, or any of the others need to know. Pepper, if you’ve read the same protocols as I have, you know what it means. You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone. Not even Ross, if he comes to ask.”

She huffs at that, a sort of mocking, disdainful laugh. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m not going to tell him anything, honestly. He sits, nice and cosy, in the Oval Office or wherever he is, pretending to lead this country because the President turned to ash. I’m not telling him anything.”

Something about the way she says it makes Clint wonder what could possibly have gone down between the both of them, but he doesn’t ask. It’s not his place.

“Have you heard from anyone else, Klein?” he asks, instead.

“Uh, we’ve heard from Thor, as well, he’s got a new weapon, and there’s another creature with them in Wakanda, life sign scans show that it’s a super engineered raccoon, but we’re not sure, he hasn’t been very cooperative-”

“A raccoon? Seriously?”

“Believe me, there was apparently a tree on the battlefield. Like the Ents, in Lord of the Rings,” Klein replies, as if that’s not the weirdest thing he’s said so far. 

Clint nods, and hands the holoscreen back to Klein. “You know who I need to find. I’ll contact you when I have, but in the meantime, don’t let Ross get his hands on anything SHIELD-related. There are still some files that haven’t made it onto the internet after Natasha leaked everything, and I’d like to keep it that way,” Clint instructs. Klein understands the unspoken dismissal and leaves them.

Nathaniel waves him goodbye, before looking up at Pepper, handing her the wrapping paper of a piece of candy he’s carried in his hand since the car ride over.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Pepper says, as she lowers herself to his level, stroking his hair. He smiles at her, and Clint crosses his arms. It’s a defensive move, because if he doesn’t, he knows he won’t be able to keep the facade. He doesn’t know how Pepper does it.

“Mommy is gone,” Nathaniel says, after she’s taken his wrapper.

Pepper smiles, sadly, at that. “I know, honey, I know. But your daddy is still here, yeah? And we’re going to work very hard to make sure that nothing happens to you.” She looks up at Clint, and directs at question at him: “Are you sure  you don’t want him to stay here?”

“I need to ask my contact first, but if it goes through,” he motions to where Klein left, meaning the whole Director of SHIELD thing, “I might send them both here. She’s Laura’s sister, and I’d never let anything happen to her. I appreciate the offer, Pepper.”

He smiles genuinely at her, and when Nathaniel reaches out to her, she picks him up. “Is Uncle Tony home?” Nathaniel asks, and Clint makes the same face he made when Nathaniel asked him in the car. This time, though, he lets Pepper answer.

“He isn’t here right now. There was a bad man who came two days ago, and Tony went with him to make sure that he couldn’t hurt anyone else,” she explains, as she pulls a loose strand of hair back behind his ears. “I don’t know where Tony is, but I’m sure he’s working very hard to make sure everything gets better again.”

“We’re going to make sure it isn’t dangerous anymore, buddy,” Clint says, as he takes a step forward and strokes his son’s cheek. 

“Do you mind keeping an eye on him, as I go find Laura’s sister? I’ll bring her back here. I don’t feel safe having him with me in New York.” 

It hurts for every word he says, because he hates having to leave him there. But he survived the chaos of a supermarket in the Midwest, and he survived the drive over. There’s a dog he barely knows back in the flat in New York to watch over their things, but he can’t do what he needs to do if Nathaniel comes with him.

Pepper nods. “I’ll keep an eye on him. Whose kid do we say it is, if someone asks?”

“Just make sure nobody needs to ask,” Clint says, as he kisses his son’s forehead, taking him from Pepper’s arms and cuddling him. 

“Hey, Nate, I have to go away for a while, and you’re going to have to stay with Auntie Pepper. You’re going to have a lot of fun, she’s got a lot of toys, and she’s got food, and there’s a whole room for you,” he tries to continue, but as soon as he’d started the sentence, Nathaniel had made a face, and was looking up at him.

“No!” his son cries, whines and moans at the same time, and Clint feels his heart break into a million pieces. He wants to just go to their cabin and be safe, but… 

“I need to find mom, yeah, Nate? I need to find mom, and I need to find Lila and Cooper, and I can’t do that when I have too keep you safe too.” He realizes the moment the words have left his lips that they were the wrong kind and this time, Nathaniel starts crying, a gentle sobbing, shaking his body.

“No, you can’t leave! I don’t want- I want mom! I want to go home!” he cries, and Clint cradles his head gently, kisses him on the head, inhaling the scent of the perfumed shampoo, feeling all of his instincts kick against what he needs to do. 

“We can’t go home,” he whispers, turning his back to Pepper, who has taken this moment to look at her phone, and is currently replying to someone by calling them back. “We have to stay here with Auntie Pepper and with daddy’s work, yeah? You always said you wanted to come here, and soon, Auntie Kate will be here too, she’ll look after you too, you know? I’m going to find her, but it’s dangerous out there, and I need you to look after Pepper. Here, look at her,” he turns so Nathaniel can watch Pepper, speaking on the phone, her face strained and looking exhausted. She probably hasn’t slept in days. “She needs you to be there for her, and she needs you to make sure that I’m doing alright, yeah? Do you understand that, buddy?”

Nathaniel says something that Clint doesn’t understand, before wiping his face, and Clint kisses his son again.

“I have to go find Kate, and I need to go find out if Uncle Barney is still here too. There’s a lot of people who are missing, like mom and Cooper and Lila, but I need to go find them to know if they’re gone or not. I promise I’m going to come back to you,” he whispers, hoping, praying, thinking that it’ll be true. He can’t not come back. 

* * *

The door sounds hollow as he knocks on it. 

He isn’t sure if she’ll even be there, but he has to try. He’s wearing a scarf across his mouth again, and the cap is solidly fastened to his head, so that the wind’s that currently blowing can knock it off and reveal his dirt blond sand-colored hair.

He waits for a couple of seconds, and is just about to knock again when a voice behind the door replies to his knock: “We don’t have any more food, I’m sorry.”

It’s her, he realizes, recognizing her voice, and immediately leaps to answer before she leaves from behind the door: “Kate, it’s Clint.”

There’s a pause, a silence, and the door opens up. Before he can realize what’s going on, a hand has grabbed his wrist, pulled him inside, and the door slams shut behind him. He looks around the house - he’s never actually been inside, just in the entrance hall - and then down at Kate’s face.

She’s been crying, that much he can tell. There are other muffled voices around the flat, and he wonders who’s still here. He pulls down the scarf from his mouth, but keeps the cap on. He doesn’t feel entirely safe about removing it just yet.

“Katie Kate-” he starts, but the words choke up at her face. She’s worn mascara at some point during the last couple of days, but it still hasn’t washed completely off.

She takes the opportunity: “Laura’s gone, isn’t she?”

She sees the look on his face when she says her name, and she shakes her head, the tears making their way to her eyes. She’s been crying recently enough that it doesn’t take more than that to bring them back. Clint’s stance falters, and from standing tall and straight, he slumps down, the defeat and loss weighing on his shoulders. He shouldn’t be like Atlas, holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, and yet, here he is.

His wife of over 15 years is gone, his oldest son and daughter are gone, and he’s here, to try and make Kate better. To try and make his sister-in-law feel better.

“She- she disappeared during the- I’m sorry, Kate. I wish I could have done something,” he whispers, barely audible enough to himself and his hearing aids, but Kate has turned around and walked away before he’s done speaking. He follows her - she hasn’t asked him to leave just yet - and makes it into the living room.

Oh.

“Mister Bishop, sir,” he says, before continuing, “Ma’am,” he nods.

Both of his parents-in-law are alive and breathing, and there’s even a butler there, and Clint feels the pieces of his heart shatter - all over again. Laura’s the only missing piece of the puzzle here. That and Cooper and Laura. There’s a portrait hanging on the wall behind Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, and Laura is holding Kate’s hand. He feels a knot in his throat, and he swallows hard, before walking into the living room, Kate having gone to her mother again.

“I- I’m sorry-”

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” the patriarch replies, and looks behind Clint. Since there’s no other person coming out from behind him, he closes his eyes, and his wife looks away. “Did any of the- of the children?”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Clint gets it. He nods. “Nathaniel.”

Laura’s mother looks up and frowns. “Well, where is he?” she asks - demands, really - and this time, Clint shakes his head.

“With someone I trust,” he begins, and walks closer to where they’re sitting. They hadn’t even bothered to stand up, which Kate had, but she looks defeated too. Not the same kind of anger, nor the same disappointed look that they’re giving him, she looks tired. Clint knows she feels the same way about losing Laura as he does about losing Barney, even though he still hasn’t heard from Barney nor gotten any proof that his brother has disappeared as well. He’s still hoping.

But for Kate, if he’s standing here alone, after whatever happened, without Laura by his side? It meant she hadn’t made it. Whatever random selection process had decided who went and who stayed, Laura hadn’t been one of those to stay behind.

“Someone you trust more than his family?” Mister Bishop says, and Clint feels the sadness recede. He’s as much of an asshole as he’s always been - also, partly the reason why Laura agreed immediately to go to Waverly, Iowa to live  in the first place.

So Clint clears his throat. “I’m not at liberty to answer that truthfully, but he is with someone whom I would give my life for.”

“Something you didn’t seem worthy for Laura, it would seem,” Mister Bishop says, under his breath. Clint knows he wasn’t supposed to hear it, but his hearing aids help him pick up whenever someone is muttering to themselves, so he elects, in the first place, to ignore the quip and go on.

“Laura, Cooper and Delilah are gone - and there’s nothing I can do about it, sitting here, in your living room. That’s why I drove from Waverly, through the outback of the American backcountry, watching as cities turned themselves inside out. You think you’re lucky, here, in New York, where Tony Stark’s power keeps you warm and cozy and keeps things running? Out there, people are already starving and have turned on each other like a flock of rabid dogs. I had to watch people fight over cigarettes and gas in every city we passed to get here, and you want to lecture me about what I would have done?”

Clearly, not reacting to the quip is not working out, but Clint is on a roll, and Kate has sat herself up straighter than she was sitting before, and Clint feels like he needs to get it out.

“Remember, when Loki possessed me for weeks on end, and I had to kill people I had worked with, for years, because I was there, on the premises when he showed up? Remember, when, during the attack on Strucker’s base, I was the only one - the ONLY one! - of all of us to get injured? Do you remember, also, how the only reason why Laura is still alive today, is because I went out there to do my job, when Stark and Banner created Ultron, and that I came back, in one piece but injured, yet again? And then, do you remember, when Laura, when Laura was the one who told me I should go and help Wanda out? I helped her out of there! And then she went to jail because of me!”

He’s yelling, at this point, and he can feel his heartbeat in his throat. When he’s done, he licks his lips and tries to go back to looking put together and ready for whatever, but the screaming, the yelling- it was what he had needed to do. Ever since Laura had gone, he hadn’t had the opportunity to tell anyone about what had happened - nobody that could understand. He’d left Nathaniel in the car that first time he’d screaming, and he hadn’t been able to let go.

Kate stands up, and looks over at her parents. “Clint wasn’t in Wakanda with the others because he did what he thought was right for him and Laura,” she states. He knows this is something her and Laura had talked about, when he wasn’t there. He knows that it’s because Kate went to the farm, for the couple of weeks he had been in the Raft.

“Secretary Ross put him in house arrest, otherwise he’d have been there, on the frontlines, fighting those aliens, on the same account as all the others.” She looks at Clint again, and nods, ever so gently. “Clint, do you even know what happened?”

That’s when Clint realizes, that no, he doesn’t. It had all happened so fast, he wasn’t even sure- Pepper had explained to him what had gone down, but right up until his pager, his decades old pager, had gone off in his drawer, he hadn’t known anything about what was going on. 

So, he shakes his head.

“Tell him what happened, then,” Kate commands, as she crosses her arms across her chest and watches her parents. They stay silent for a while, before her father finally leans forward in his chair, and dares reply to her demand.

“The ones who attacked New York? Edinburgh? They folded out an assault on Wakanda to get their hands on something there. We think,” Kate glares at him, and he corrects himself, “the press thinks, that it was the Vision. The Mind Stone that was powering him, that’s what they were after. Press has said that it’s because of that. Steve Rogers lost the fight to an alien, and now, the planet is in shambles. What a bunch of defenders you are,” he finishes, and Clint wants to punch him. 

He knows he shouldn’t, because it’s his father-in-law, but he’s a self righteous, annoying, little shit. But that’s not what he says. Instead, he takes a deep breath and speaks as quietly and calmly as he can: “And where were you, when my trial went down? When Thaddeus Ross put an ankle bracelet around my ankle and forced me to stay at the farm? When the Accords sent everyone at each other’s throats? You were in the press, vilifying us. No better than the Daily Bugle and Jameson’s allegations- do you have any idea what public opinion did? What it mattered?”

Clint has taken a couple of steps forward, but this time, he stops himself and looks over at Kate. “I want you to come with me,” he starts, and almost hears her protest before she’s said it, “It’ll be to keep you safe.”

He knows that she won’t say yes. He’d hoped, if the parents had disappeared in the Event, that he could show up and ask her to come with him to look after Nathaniel. But with them still here… They were some of the harshest parents he’d ever heard or witnessed, and that was saying something. 

She stutters: “I can’t- I can’t go, I can’t leave them-” 

She points to her parents, and Clint looks at her. He reads her expression, and knows he can’t force her to leave. Not right now. So instead of picking another fight, he lets her go, as he closes his eyes and nods, giving her his approval to stay - even though he knows she doesn’t need it. She’s a big girl.

“Then, if you can’t go, can you point me to the Crane Sisters?”

* * *

It’s after dark, and it’s pissing down. He’s pretty sure that there is no part of his body that’s dry anymore, but he doesn’t care.

He needs to make it down to the corner of 10th and 47th Street, because that’s where he’ll find the women he needs. If he needs to become the leader of SHIELD, if he has to make it to that rank, if he has to face Secretary Ross and become a beacon of hope in this bleak, broken world, there are a certain number of steps he needs to take in order to ensure his rise.

He thinks back to that meeting around a table, where he, Carol Danvers, Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Peggy Carter and Howard Stark had sat and set up those steps. Nick hadn’t lost his eye at that point, Howard Stark hadn’t been murdered by HYDRA, Captain Danvers hadn’t disappeared to the far edges of the Universe, Phil hadn’t started losing his hair yet, and Peggy… Well, Peggy still had all of her mind.

It makes Clint so angry to think about just how far Alexander Pierce’s evil had gone. To which lengths he had gone to ensure that the secret of HYDRA had never been found out.

Poisoning Peggy, so she started losing her oh so brilliant mind to what looked and appeared to be dementia?

If Natasha hadn’t shot the man dead in the chest, Clint would have done it himself.

As he walks down the streets, down towards 10th, he thinks about what happened in that meeting room. He remembers them talking about what a rookie he was, and he remembers feeling out of place. Every single person sitting at that meeting table had achieved more than him, had done more than him, would do more than him, and would be remembered in history for their achievements. Clint was only a young man who had just made it to his twenties, and to look at those historical figures in front of him?

Well. He thinks, now, thank God that he had been there. Every single person who could have done anything for SHIELD is gone, now. He knows that there would be people out there, people like Cameron Klein, or Sharon Carter, who would stand up and take a leading position for the Department.

He turns onto 10th, and walks quietly through the rain, all the way up to the entrance of the tattoo shop. There’s a sign that says ‘closed’ at the front, but he knows that if he knocks enough times, someone will come out. There’s three of them in there. He waits for a couple of seconds after knocking, before he knocks again. A cat moves behind the window, and looks at him, as if pitying him for trying to get in now.

Eventually, as he keeps on trying, one of the women comes out of a backroom. She’s got a knife in her hand, and Clint is sure that it’s absolutely unnecessary. She probably knows how to break his neck before he could blink. With how out of shape he’s been, he is absolutely sure that she would win a fight, should it break out. 

She motions to him in a ‘what do you want’ manner, and he pulls out an old piece of paper, stamped with the older SHIELD-logo, and puts it up against the glass. She comes closer, and reads it. As she does, and he reads her expression, he pulls down the scarf he’s been wearing under the rain to hide his face. 

She looks at him, through the glass, and then unlocks the front door. He comes inside, and she closes again, guiding him through the shop, no matter how much water is splashing off his clothes. He comes out to the backroom, where the scent of incense overpowers anything he’d been expecting from inside.

The two other women are sitting around a table, playing cards, entertaining themselves the best way they can. There’s candles lit sitting around the room, and for a second Clint thinks that they must have no power, but then he realizes that there’s a heater going at full speed in the corner. It’s a choice, then. He pulls off the hood of his jacket, and pulls down his scarf. The first woman takes out the note from his hand and goes to her sisters, speaking to them in a language Clint can’t understand.

He knows quite a few, but this one remains a mystery to him. They look back over their shoulders at them, and go back to speaking. 

Finally, after a couple of minutes of them speaking, the woman who had opened the door for him comes over to him and looks him in the eye. She’s holding her hands on her hips, and Clint doesn’t dare say a lot. He knows what they’re capable of - he knows their art runs deep into the roots of magic, and he doesn’t want to blow this to pieces by saying something stupid.

Not that he believes in the magic mojo things he should believe in after meeting Loki and Thor respectively, but… There’s gotta be a limit somewhere.

“Fury told us what to do, should you show up here with-” she motions to the paper, she’s handing back to him, “-that. Unfortunately, we can’t do the work her.” She turns around, inviting Clint to follow her as she walks forward, towards the other two women.

He knows they call themselves the Crane Sisters, and he wonders if they’re family by the bonds of blood or if it’s a covenant thing. He watches them, analyzing their movements, but they play on, almost ignoring him.

“For you to get what you need, you need to travel to the land of the rising sun and find the Iron Fist there,” they tell him, and Clint frowns. The Iron Fist? They can’t mean-

“Danny Rand?”

“The Iron Fist has been many people, it is up to you to find the one you seek,” one of the two other women replies him, and he looks at her, frown on his face.

“What do you mean?”

They all smile. “Many things have happened, while you were gone from New York, Agent Barton. Not everything we do is privy to SHIELD business anymore, and we can’t tell you more than we already have, I’m sorry.”

They pause, before exchanging a knowing glance amongst themselves. 

“You will find some answers if you can find the woman with the white hand. You might need help to find her, as she’s good at hiding.”

He frowns, but they nod towards the door he came through. Clint stands there, quietly, waiting for an answer, for anything, but when they refuse to tell him anything more, going back to their dialect, he has to admit to himself that he probably needs to follow their instructions. He turns around, and goes towards the door, pulling the scarf up above his face, before going back outside to the pouring rain. 

Clint knows about Danny Rand and about his so-called Iron Fist, and Clint knows about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and about Power man and about Jessica Jones. He hasn’t had the pleasure to meet any of them, but suddenly, as he thinks about it, he knows someone who belongs to Hell’s Kitchen, who might help him. 

He stops, and turns around, pulls down the scarf across his face and calls across the room, to the three women. “Do you know where I can find Frank Castle?”

* * *

Dawn is creeping up around the horizon, and Clint is still roaming the streets of New York. He’s had to hide from the police twice already, but his wall climbing skills have brought him luck in escaping from them.

The Crane Sisters gave him an address, and when he’s finally made it to Hell’s Kitchen - a little over two and a half miles, and a little over an hour and a half on foot, with the rain pouring still - he checks the road left and right before crossing.

He hasn’t seen Frank in years - not since he was lying in a medically induced coma to prevent him from dying from a gunshot to the head. Not since before- well. Since before Frank became a vigilante and put an end to three different gangs within New York, since before the Trial of the Century, since before the fall of Anvil Securities…

Clint kicks the door handle open, and walks into the entrance hall. There’s nobody there, and he isn’t sure if it’s because of the Event or if it’s because of the location. Hell’s Kitchen was never a big favorite place of his, but he used to come, when his kids would play with Frank’s kids. He climbs to the second floor, quietly moving across the tile floors, making sure the heels from his boots don’t echo against the walls.

And when he finally makes it to the address the Crane Sisters have given him, he inhales sharply. They didn’t know if Frank was still with them, or if he’d turned to dust as well. So, when he knocks on the door three times, one time, and then three times again, he doesn’t know if he’ll get an answer. 

He’s still soaking wet, the walk under the rain had been exhausting as well, and all he wants is a warm shower and some dry clothes, but he isn’t expecting much from his old friend. They haven’t spoken in years. There’s a sound on the other side of the door, and Clint stands up straight. He hates not knowing who’s behind the door, if it’s a trap, if it’s an ambush, but when the door opens, a large, golden colored boxer dog appears before a familiar face does. 

“Barton?”

He hasn’t seen Lieutenant Frank Castle so startled in years, but the look of relief that floods the man’s face after he realizes who’s standing in the doorway warms Clint’s heart.

“Castle,” Clint replies, as flatly as Frank had said his name, but before the dog reacts, they’re embracing each other. It’s a brotherly embrace, and Clint feels the relief in seeing an old friend still here. At least he will understand what it means to have lost your family, he will understand 

Clint walks into the apartment, as soon as they’re done, and Frank closes the door. The dog climbs onto him, his front paws on Clint’s thighs, inspecting who he is.

“It’s good to see you, but why are you in New York?” Frank asks, and Clint pulls down the scarf again, pull it completely off and looking around, as he drips onto the hardwood floor in the flat. Frank understands, and points him to the bathroom. 

Clint replies as he walks out there, pulling off his jacket, his jumper, bends forward to unlace his boots, and toes them off. “I need your help with something,” he starts, looking over at Frank, who’s holding the dog back by the leash. Clint notices some faded flowers in a vase on a table in the living room, before he speaks again. “I need to find someone called Danny Rand. I uh- I need his help.”

Frank watches him, a frown on his forehead, inspecting Clint’s face and body language like he always did, back when they were in the army together. There was a reason that Clint had chosen Frank as the godfather to his oldest son and Frank had chosen Clint as the godfather to his oldest daughter.

“Why do you need his help?”

He doesn’t ask the other thing - where’s Laura? Where’s the kids? Why are you here alone? 

He knows, Clint realizes. He knows by the way Clint is holding himself, by the way he is avoiding his gaze, by the way he seems to be ignoring any sort of eye contact altogether. Clint throws the wet clothes and scarf on the edges of the tub, so they can drip off and walks back into the entrance hall, where Frank is still standing.

“When the- when the Event happened,” Clint begins, ruffling his hand through his hair, stroking it towards the back, so as to push the water out of it from the back, “Fury activated a protocol we set up years ago. I mean, over twenty years ago, right after I’d left the army to join SHIELD,” he explains.

Frank lets go of the dog’s leash, and the dog goes into the living room to lie in one of the dog beds, and Frank motions for them to follow him towards the couch.

Clint goes to sit down, as he continues speaking, “Fury disappeared during the Event, just like Maria Hill did. Or so I think, I haven’t heard from either, and I’ve heard from a lot of people, who are asking me if I’m alive.” He pauses, as Frank has opened the fridge and is offering him a beer. He declines with a shake of his head, and continues talking, “I’m the only Senior SHIELD operative left, Frank. We talked about what should happen, if that ended up being the case, and I need to find someone called Maya Lopez. She knows what I need to do and where I need to go, but with the curfew and Ross potentially looking for me, I can’t get on with the program. Potts is handling the energy thing for now, and she’s got a SHIELD operative helping her with the SHIELD stuff, but I-”

“You’re the Director of SHIELD, now, aren’t you?” Frank interrupts, as he joins Clint on the couch, cold beer in hand, eyes dark and purple creases under his eyes. He looks as exhausted as Clint feels. 

Clint doesn’t try to hide it, there’s no point. “It would seem so.”

Frank snickers, and Clint frowns, unsure what caused that reaction, until Frank grins and smiles at him. “You finally climbed that grade above mine, like you always wanted,” he says, and for once since his world crumbled, Clint feels like laughing. 

So he does. He lets out a laugh, and is joined by Frank in it, before they both let it fade out. Clint’s knuckles are white, as he fumbles with his thumbs. “Ross will try to take over SHIELD, he’s already pushed the head of the FBI and the CIA out, and it looks like he’ll try to assume command of the different branches of the armed forces too.”

“How do you know this?”

“Potts told me. He’s been negotiating with her, about diverting some of the arc reactor’s energy towards his own facilities, but she’s said no as it’s a priority that the citizens of New York and surroundings benefit from Stark’s technology as long as possible.” Clint cracks his knuckles. “There’s another thing. I don’t know if you know, but there was a US Air Force Major, back in the nineties, when I was just a rookie. She moved to SHIELD after an accident in Cape Canaveral-”

“Yeah, Captain Danvers. We all hear the stories about her,” Frank interrupts, but Clint continues, as he doesn’t want to let himself lose focus of the phrase. 

“She’s- well, she’s out there,” he motions to the window, to the sky, to wherever and nowhere at the same time, “and Fury activated a protocol to call her back. The accident she suffered in Cape Canaveral gave her a special set of powers, and when she crashed into Fury’s life, and SHIELD’s life, she promised to come back if things went off the rails. I guess, this time, Fury must have thought that we weren’t enough to protect the Earth anymore,” he finishes, his voice trailing out.

Fury hadn’t activated the protocol for the Battle of New York, nor for the Ultron-assault, but he had after the few events that had unfolded within 24 hours. And, since there’s no sign of Nick Fury anywhere after the Event, Clint knows that it’s because he did it with his dying breath.

“My sister-in-law, Kate, she’s still in New York. Nathaniel, he’s-”

“Nate’s still here? Not- not the-”

“No, Laura, she- she disappeared. Like everybody else. And Coop and Lila too,” Clint lets out, his voice strained, as he struggles to keep it steady. He knows that Frank knows what it’s like to lose someone, when he could have done anything, something, to prevent it. 

“I need to do this, Frank. I need to find a way to- to understand why it happened. I need to make sure that people like Ross, that people like him don’t destroy what’s left of us for the sake of his own greedy goals. I have to make sure Carol Danvers makes it back to Earth and helps us figure out how to fix whatever happened.”

Frank hands him the beer bottle, but Clint refuses it again. Frank chuckles again, and the dog’s ears perk up at the sound, but he goes back to sleep when he realizes that it wasn’t meant for him. 

“You said your kid’s with Potts? Where’s that?”

“At the Avengers facility, out of town. It’s the safest place I know right now, and I didn’t know if you were still- if you were still alive, so I didn’t bring him here, otherwise I would have. I trust Stark’s security protocols more than anything, right now.”

“And your sister-in-law?”

“She wasn’t ready to leave her parents, they survived the Event too. I don’t think it’s safe for her here, but I couldn’t force her to come with me, you know? She still admires and respects her parents too much.”

Frank huffs, agreeing about the in-laws thing. Maria’s parent’s had been a pain in his ass, and he had never tried to get back into contact with them after that fateful day at the park. 

“You want me to keep an eye on her?” Frank suggests. “I can go out there and check up on her when I do my rounds,” he says, before putting the bottle to his lips and sipping some of the beer.

“You looking out for anyone else?” Clint asks, and Frank nods.

“Yeah, there’s this journalist, Karen Page. She survived the Event too, but she’s shaken. Her colleagues, the lawyers who defended me during the trial, they’re still alive as well. So is Fisk, and with the police and other security forces in shambles after the Event, I won’t let her stay on her own. I can stop by Brooklyn and check-up on Kate if you want me, while you’re gone.”

Clint nods. “I’d appreciate that. The reason I’m here, though-”

“Yeah, Maya Lopez, I know where to find her. She hangs out by the slums, down by the docks. You know her?”

“She’s the one who gave me my first gear, after I left the military, and I think that she can help me figure out how to find Rand,” Clint replies, nodding, as if it will cement the truth of his statement more. He looks over at the dog, and smiles, forgetting for a second the seriousness of the conversation to tell Frank that, “I picked up a dog, in Iowa. His owners had disappeared into ashes, as well, and I couldn’t leave him. Same breed, same face, same character as Lucky, can you believe that? My kid, Nate, he decided he should be called Lucky too, so I had to do that as well.”

Frank huffs, and looks at the dog. “I saved that one from a dog fighting kennel, and he hasn’t left my side since. The Irish tried to use him to get me to talk, but they’re not here anymore, so…”

Frank smiles, and Clint nods. 

“You need a shower, Barton, you look like hell, by the way. Where were you, Brooklyn, or-”

“I was at the Crane Sisters’ place. That’s where Fury told me to start. It’s the first clue.”

* * *

There’s a couple of people in the bar when he enters, followed closely behind by Castle. They’re both wearing caps to hide their faces from the security cameras around them, and so far they’ve been able to avoid detection by following the back streets of New York.

Josie’s bar was still open, in spite of the Event, and a higher concentration of people didn’t seem to deter Clint and Frank from getting inside. Some heads turned their way when the bell on the door rang, but then everyone went back to their business. In the back, behind the pool table, sat two women at a table, that the pool players didn’t seem to want to disturb. One of them had a bleeding gash across the temple, and Clint knew then that they’d tried and been pushed away. Violently.

They walk across the bar, their scarves pulled down, their clothes dripping on the floor as they do, but Josie knows both Frank and Clint very well, and she knows better than to tell them to get rid of their coats. When they’re here on civilian duty, they greet her by name, but here, all they give her is a nod. She knows that they’re not here to hang out, and when she sees who they’re headed towards, she decides to let go of the fact that they’re getting rain water all over her hardwood floor.

The boys by the pool table part when they walk past them, and someone whispers that it’s the Punisher and ‘that guy from the Battle of New York’, but they stop talking as Clint pulls out a chair by the two women. Frank doesn’t pull up a chair, but simply leans against the wall in the back, arms crossed across his chest, watching intently. He’s Clint’s back-up, and nobody is in any doubt of that.

The two women look at them, an eyebrow raised, unimpressed, and the one wearing a snake skin leather jacket sits back a wide smile on her lips. Clint pulls out a knife and slams it on the wooden table, making the people at the table next to them jump.

“Well, Barton, looks like you haven’t forgotten the price,” she says, and her voice sounds like she’s smoked more cigarettes than humanly possible a day for years. Her hair is unruly, but settled in a bun nonetheless, and Clint remembers how he admired her, back when he was young, back in Carson’s Circus of Travelling Wonders.

“I’m not here for you, Zelda,” he says, and turns to the other woman. He pulls his jacket off, freeing his hands, and begins signing to her instead of speaking to her:  **I am here to talk to you, Maya,** he signs, and she smiles.

Her hair is up in a bun as well, but a loose strand of hair hangs in front of her face. She moves it away as she chuckles, silently, before signing vaguely back at him that,  **I know why you’re here, little Hawk** . 

Clint frowns, as she signs on, leaning forward, Zelda DuBois doing the same. Clint hears Frank take one step closer.  **You need to go to Japan, and you need my help. Do you know what price you must pay?** She asks, and Clint looks at her, puzzled.

**Price?** He signs, and she lifts her hands, shrugging.

**If you do not know, I cannot help you,** she says, and looks over at Zelda, a knowing look on her face, as if Clint is the butt of a joke he doesn’t  understand. 

The two women are older than him by a decade, and he knows better than to provoke them, but he needs Maya’s help. So, he picks out the knife from the table and points it at her.  **F-U-R-Y gave you an order, long ago. Do you remember it?** He signs, and Zelda laughs.

She knows sign language too, Clint remembers, but then Maya smiles and points at Clint’s ears.  **When did you lose them?** She asks, and Clint takes a deep breath. This is like negotiating with a contact who’s unwilling to give up information, and he’s done so successfully before.

He pulls out the card he’d shown the Crane Sisters, but Maya doesn’t take it. She puts out her hand and makes a ‘give me’ motion, demanding he give her the knife. Clint obliges, quietly, calmly, slowly, and the moment she’s got the handle in her hand, she flicks it around, stands up, and puts it to Clint’s throat.

He can feel the blade against his skin, it’s cool and sharp, and he knows that if he makes any wrong movement, she will cut his throat. He heard Frank stand forward too, but in the second Maya put the blade to his throat, Zelda pulled out a knife from somewhere on her body and reached for Frank’s throat too.

“Don’t move, Frank,” Clint says, and swallows hard. He feels the knife cut through the skin a little bit, as pain echoes through his throat, and he looks up at Maya’s face. She’s staring intently at him. 

He signs  **L-E-T M-E S-H-O-W Y-O-U** to her with his one free hand, and she removes the blade from his throat, a large smile on her face. Zelda lowers her knife as well, and Frank moves out of her embrace aggressively, shaking her off as you would something clammy and uncomfortable.

Clint lifts the paper again, and puts it in Maya’s hand again, allowing her to read it. He lets her have a couple of seconds to see what’s on it, but he can read on her face how far along she gets, and when she’s done, she looks up at him.  **Do you have it with you?** She asks, and Clint nods.

**I brought it with me, when I came to New York. I can’t do this as Hawkeye,** he signs, and she nods.  **Fury wanted someone stronger than Hawkeye to lead SHIELD** .

Maya exchanges a glance with Zelda, and before Clint has managed to think about what’s going on, Zelda speaks on Maya’s behalf.

“Give us a minute, yeah?” she orders. Clint gets up from his chair without hesitating, and takes Frank by the sleeve, leading him away from the table.

“What the hell is going on, Barton?” Frank bites, and Clint purses his lips, annoyed.

“She’s going to say yes, but she needed some convincing-”

“So you let her put a knife to our throats? That was not part of the deal!” Frank barks, raising some looks from around the bar. 

Josie looks their way, at the tenants, says a “mind your own businesses, gentlemen,” before going back to serving the Whiskey she was pouring for a gentlemen at the counter.

Clint looks Frank in the eyes and takes a deep breath. “I need Maya to accompany me to Japan. Remember the sword I had, when you met me in the army? She’s the one who taught me. You said yourself, I’m going to lead SHIELD, but I won’t be doing it as Hawkeye.”

Frank takes a couple of seconds, analysing Clint’s face, turning around to look at Zelda and Maya who are signing away, then looks back at Clint. “You won’t tell anyone that you’re alive?” Clint nods. “So you’re taking up one of your older aliases?” Clint nods as well. “Does that mean that none of the other Avengers know you’re alive?”

“None of them do, I haven’t replied to their messages. As far as they know, I turned to ash just like-” 

The words get caught in Clint’s mouth, and he’s saved by the bell when Zelda calls him over, “Oi, Barton,” and he nods at Frank, whom he leaves behind, mouth gaping open like a fish out of water.

“Princess,” Clint calls, a throwback to her nickname as a circus performer.

Maya looks at him, a smile plastered on her face.  **I’ll go with you, Birdbrain** , she signs, leaning back in the booth.  **We leave in three days** .

**Thank you, Sensei** , Clint signs and gently bends forward. Both Zelda and Maya laugh at that, turning away from Clint and Frank, resuming their conversation as if nothing had happened.

Clint walks back to join Frank, who’s still looking at him like he’s crazy, and as they cross to leave the bar again, Frank raises the issue once again: “Don’t you think they’d like to know you were alive?”

Clint shakes his head, greets Josie with a nod again, and moves to the main door, before stopping. 

“I don’t think I can do this if they know. I can’t- if I tell them I’m alive, I’ll have to accept- I’ll have to tell them that Laura didn’t- that she didn’t make it, yeah? And I can’t- I can’t make peace with that if I have to cowboy around with them, to try and fix whatever happened.”

Frank watches him, carefully, before nodding. “Who knows you’re alive?”

“Potts, a SHIELD liaison, the two women behind me, my sister-in-law and her parents, and that’s about it. Anyone who knows who I am and who knows I am, that’s them,” Clint replies, quietly, and Frank nods again.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Keep an eye on Kate, and on Nathaniel. I can’t take them with me where I’m going. As long as I’m gone, you’re the last line of defense they have against Ross, if he finds out that they’re related to me.” 

Clint doesn’t let Frank answer, before he pushes the doors open and the sound of the rain encompasses him entirely. He feels Frank follow him outside, and feels him as a shadow, right up until they reach the crossing where Frank will go left and Clint will go straight.

They don’t say bye, they don’t hug, they don’t say anything else more than what has already been said. Clint walks across the city under the rain until he’s back in Bed Stuy, his legs sore and tired from the walk, his body cold and tired from the rain, his mind racing and tired from the decisions he’s made.

Lucky barks when he puts his key in the lock, but greets him with a tailwag and an attempted tackle. 

“We’re not staying here,” Clint tells him, before getting to work on packing all his things together again. He leaves a message on the fridge that’s meant for Barney only, telling him where he’s going.

When Clint locks the door behind him, he doesn’t look back. He needs to forget this apartment, if he’s going to be strong enough to do what’s expected of him. 

* * *

Klein comes running, out of breath, out of shape, out of order, even though Clint had told him not to. So Klein finds Clint standing in the middle of his room, a black silken garb laid out on the chair in front of him, holding a sheath in one hand and a magnificent katana in the other. Rolling his eyes, Clint turns around, sheathing the weapon again, resigned that Klein will never listen to the orders he’s given him.

“What?” Clint bites, and Klein fumbles for his words before he answers.

“Castle, sir- the Punisher? He’s here, and he’s got a girl with him-”

Frowning, Clint rests the sword on the chair, and walks out of the room. Lucky’s head perked up when Klein had irrupted in the room, so he’s gotten up as well, and is now following Clint and Klein, as Klein tries to explain what’s happened again:

“She says- she says that she only wants to talk to you, but she’s not- she’s not saying a lot. Miss Potts isn’t here, and I didn’t know what the protocol was, and I- I- I know you said not to disturb you but-”

“Who is it?” Clint interrupts, and Klein swallows.

“Facial scan says it’s Katherine Bishop, sir.”

Clint stops up for a half of a second, and then sets off to a running sprint towards the entrance. He barely registers that Klein is yelling at him to go to the infirmary instead before he turns, Lucky running by his side.

He almost loses his balance when he takes the last turn toward the medical wing of the establishment, and barrels into Castle who’s put his hands out to stop him.

“Barton, listen to me-” Frank moves to the side as Clint tries to move past him, and moves to the other side as well to keep Clint from moving past him.

“Barton, hey!” 

He uses his authoritative voice, the same Clint knows he uses when he needs someone to focus, and he stops trying to move past his friend.

“Barton, listen. Something happened to her, she’s not speaking right now-”

“What-”

“Shut up and listen to me, man! Listen, I found her because you told me to look after her, yeah? She was lying in an alley, face bloodied and she’s got her eye bashed in, but there’s something else,” Frank goes on, while Clint only then realizes that Frank’s got a bloodied eye and has blood smeared across his hands, “you can’t go in there yet, alright? She’s with a nurse, they’re taking care of her but-”

“Tell me she hasn’t been shot or hurt,” Clint bites, through grit teeth as he tries to keep his composure. This is why he’d wanted her to come with him in the first place, this is why he didn’t trust Laura’s parents, they didn’t know how to protect their kids, this is why- Clint feels his nails dig into the palms of his hands as he feels his heartbeat accelerate. Frank isn’t replying. “Why aren’t you replying?”

“You gotta give her time, Barton!”

Clint looks at Frank, at his best friend, and realizes that he’s been shot - he’s got a bloody shirt on, hasn’t received any medical aid yet, and he looks exhausted. 

“What happened, Frank?”

“I don’t know, I found her, they shot me, I came here, simple as that, but we gotta give her time. Okay?”

Lucky sneaks past Frank and both men turn to call him back here, but Lucky’s gone into the medical bay before either of them can stop him. Clint presses his digicode into the card reader, as he’s forgotten his ID in the room, but access is denied. He tries again, and FRIDAY tells him that he isn’t allowed into the bay.

“FRIDAY, why can’t I get into the medical bay?” he asks, and the automated voice stays silent. “FRIDAY?!”

The AI finally reponds, “Your security protocols have been deactivated by the medical staff, Director Barton. It would seem the patient needs more time before she can see you.”

Clint growls at the response he gets, and at the frosted glass that’s keeping him from looking inside the medical area. He turns to Frank and looks at the gunshot wound, focusing on that instead.

“Did you kill them?” he snarls, and Frank nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANOTHER cliffhanger?  
> Well, I can't not do that, can I? It's like my trademark.  
> How did you enjoy Maya Lopez and Zelda DuBois? In my headcanon, they're a bit older than Clint, somewhere around a decade, and they're totally hanging out together when they're not out there destroying members of the Hand and other nonsense.
> 
> Please, please, please, comment with your thoughts, your best passages, your reactions and yell at me? I love it when you do that, and because of the last few days being so busy, I haven't been able to write on NaNo for 3 days! I'm hoping to make it to 33k tonight (November 14th, 2018), though, so let's see how that goes <3
> 
> I'm spectralarchers over on tumblr, come say hi ♥


	4. One week after the Snap.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some goodbyes are harder than others. Some goodbyes are better left unspoken. Some goodbyes will never, ever be said out loud. It's not easy, though, and when life calls Clint Barton out of duty, because he was chosen, over twenty years ago, to step up and lead the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division if all the others fail, he has to respond. For Thaddeus Ross' reach is growing after the Event, and to keep SHIELD's intelligence and personnel out of his hands, Clint must become its leader.  
> But how do you say goodbye to your own family? How do you prepare for a job like that, when you've lost almost everything?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi my loves, it's me again!  
> With another update!  
> I loved your comments on the previous chapter, and I can't wait to see how you guys react to this chapter! I'm excited in bringing in some characters and mentioning some other ones - I had to dig deep into Marvel-lore to find someone I needed who will show up in later chapters, but I hope it'll be worth it in the end!  
> I hope you enjoy this chapter - let me know in the comments <3
> 
>  
> 
> **Trigger warning: This first scene has two characters discussing the aftermath of one of them being sexually assaulted, although there are no explicit descriptions. If you need to, you can skip to the next scene - I have provided a quick description of what happens in the first scene if you cannot bear to read it.**

 There’s no noise in the room, except her breathing. Frank’s been sitting at the little table in the corner, reading a book, for the past couple of hours.

Clint had come and gone, angry about having duties to attend to, but had needed to leave her bedside to take care of his son and prepare for him leaving the country. It’s quiet, and Frank is so caught up in the book that he barely hears her move under the bed covers. He looks up as she does, not getting up, letting her come to her senses.

Her eyes settled on him as she looks around the room, and he sees her eyes well up. He watches as tears leave both of her eyes, and in an effort, she turns around to ignore him. 

But she’s awake now, he realizes, and even her won’t be able to ignore the fact that they’re both sitting here. And Frank is pretty sure he knows what happened, even though he didn’t see it. He got shot for it, but he was too late. He lets her have a moment, and resumes reading his book. 

He’s read about a hundred and twenty five pages when she finally turns around in the bed, and looks at him. She curls up, lying in fetal position, holding her arms across her chest, bringing her knees up towards her chest. Frank watches her out of the corner of his eye, and leaves her the choice of beginning the conversation. He pretends to read, turning a page he hasn’t read, but he can’t fool her.

“I know you’re not reading,” she says, her voice frail and broken, sadness oozing through it, as if she knows that he knows.

He shuts the book with a bang, and lies it down in front of him, neatly aligned with the edge of the table as he looks over at her. He got twelve sutures where the bullet went through his skin, after one of the SHIELD nurses had pulled the bullet out, so he’s still feeling a bit sore in his arm.

“Didn’t want to startle you,” he replies to her, and she almost smiles.

She doesn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, but eventually, she lets go of her fears. “Did you- did you see?”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, giving her the time she needs to process it. He knows. He’s seen it happen before, halfway around the world, and he knows how women - and men - react, when they realized what’s happened.

She chokes back a sob, biting her lip hard, grabbing the sheets as if they’re going to protect her. He doesn’t move from the chair, giving her the time. She’s got a blackened eye, and she’s got a bruised jaw. And a couple of broken ribs. She looks at him again, and inhales sharply before asking again.

“Did you- did you kill them?”

He nods again. Somehow, learning that they’re dead - that they’re gone - doesn’t seem to shock her. After all, he is the Punisher, he realizes, and women were made to feel safer in the streets when he roamed them, years ago. He gets up from the chair and puts his hands behind his back, standing straight, standing at attention for her. She watches him, uncurls herself, and looks at the door. There’s nobody there.

“Does he know?”

Shaking his head, Frank walks towards her bed, pulling out the little stool next to it, sitting down on it, still giving her some space. “I haven’t told him,” Frank replies, quietly, his voice flat and even. “That should be your choice.”

She smiles, sadly, at him. He looks so young, he realizes, and he tries to remember if he knows how old she is. She’s younger than Laura by a decade at least, having come long after Laura was a teenager. Her hair is black as ebony, and she looks like she knows what she wants from life. Even with a blackened eye and a purple jaw, bandages across her chest where her ribs were kicked in.

She inhales sharply, then seizes at the pain that shoots through her at the movement, when she realizes she can’t breathe in too violently because of the broken ribs. He gives her the minutes she needs to calm down again. Kate looks away from him, after a couple of minutes. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have- I shouldn’t have gone out on my own,” she says, and Frank wants to interrupt, but she isn’t done yet. “I wanted to- I wanted to get away from my parents for a while. When Clint came to tell that Laura didn’t- that she didn’t- I needed to get away, you know?”

She looks up at him, and Frank nods quietly again, his thumb drumming against the back of his other hand. 

“I didn’t think- I hadn’t really been out after the- after the Event, so I didn’t think-”

This time, however, she is unable to keep her voice steady, and recollecting the memories, she slowly starts crying, as she realizes what has happened.

“Hey, kid,” Frank says, his voice soft and low, so he doesn’t startle her. “It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t blame yourself for their behavior, it was only and entirely on them.” He pauses, giving her the time to steady her breathing, as she realizes crying hurts as well, before he goes on. “You did nothing wrong, at all, do you hear me? You did nothing wrong. What happened to you was their fault and their fault alone.”

He pauses, then leans back on the stool. She watches him, a tear trickling down her face, so Frank turns around, his eyes scanning the room for a tissue or some sort of paper she can dry her face in. He sees a paper towel dispenser on the living room table, walks over with the roll, and hands it to her. 

She reaches out for it, and breaks a piece of it off. “Thanks,” she mutters, and Frank wonders if she’s saying thanks for the tissue, or thanks for… the other thing. He looks down at his chest and realizes the sutures are visible, as his shirt is unbuttoned. He pulls it together, before smiling at her. 

“I- I didn’t realize that things were this bad,” she says, as she’s dried her face with a piece of paper. Frank puts out his hand, and when she hands him the tissue, he throws it in the trash can behind him, letting her go on. “I thought- I thought it was just… You know, you see things on television and you don’t realize they’re real until you’re standing in it.”

He smiles, before answering. “No, you don’t. Once you’ve seen it, though, you can never go back to how things were before.” He pauses, allowing her to settle her breathing again. She plays a little bit with the sheets in front of her, before looking up at him again. “Don’t tell him?”

He frowns, but not because he’s unsure of what she’s asking him to do, but because he wasn’t going to any way. “It wouldn’t be my place,” he assures her, and she smiles at that. “I hope you’ll forgive me for getting rid of them for you,” he adds, and she smiles, a genuine, teary eyed smile, and she evens exhales a snot bubble at that, which makes both her and him laugh. 

He breaks off another piece of paper towel, and she blows her nose. 

“Thanks,” she says, as he reaches out for it again, and throws it in the trash. She pauses for a couple of seconds, and then speaks again, her voice so quiet, so gentle, so afraid that he barely hears her. “How do you- how do you go on with life, after something like- something like this?” she says, motioning to the rest of the bed she’s lying in, and Frank purses his lips, thoughtful.

“You learn how to make sure the world can never do something like that to you again, I think,” he replies. He’s not sure - he’s always known how to defend himself, he’d had to, learned it as a kid, perfected it as an adult. If he could protect himself from the world and push the dangerous ones away, he didn’t need to worry about what could happen to him. 

He thinks to the dog that’s still in his flat, he’d rescued from a fight club. He thinks to Karen, he’d rescued from a shooting. He thinks to Daredevil, he’d rescued from the Hand. 

He nods to her, a smile creeping forward on his lips, and she smiles back. “You use the rage and the pain, and turn it into something stronger.”

Kate smiles at him, and he sees her eyes well up again, tears making their way back to her face, and he hands her the paper towel roll again. “Here, you’ll need this more than me,” he says, pointing to the sutures on his shoulder. “You should rest a bit more, you’re still processing what happened.”

He stands up from the stool, and puts it back to where it was, before walking all the way up to the bed. She puts out her hand, and he takes it. “I’ll be around for a while still, to help Barton prepare for his mission, and after that, I’ll go back to Hell’s Kitchen.”

“I think I’ll stay here, for a bit,” Kate says, looking out at the room. There isn’t much in it, and there isn’t much life outside of it, but Frank knows what she means. Better here than her parent’s house. Better here than there. Better here than… He nods.

“It’s safe here. Stark built this base to withstand anything, even Ross,” he chuckles, and looks over at the door. “Potts heard from Captain Rogers today. They’re asking if he’s alive,” he points over his shoulder with his thumb. “He told me to not say anything about him, but his kid is here. Nate’s going to stay here, until Clint gets back from wherever he’s going. MIss Potts said you’re welcome to stay here, she says there are some living quarters you’d like.”

Kate swallows, thinking it over. “I think I’d like that.”

“You get some rest, sweetheart. You need it.”

She lets go of his hand, and he begins to walk away, but stops when she calls out a “Stop.” He turns around and looks at her. She’s crying again. 

“Please stay. Even if you’re just reading.” She pauses, pulls the roll of paper towels up to her chest, then down again, as if she’s unsure of what to do with her hands. “I don’t want to be alone right now,” she whispers, and Frank smiles. It’s a pained smile, but he knows why she’s asking him to stay.

He remembers waking up disoriented, in a hospital he didn’t know, surrounded by people he didn’t know. 

“You’re lucky I still have two hundred pages in this thing,” he says, humorous, as he goes back to the chair he was sitting in, and opens the book where he’d left off. “Barton won’t let me read in peace if I go out there anyway,” he continues, and smiles when he sees the ghost of a smile on her face.

“You rest, yeah? I’ll stay here until it’s safe again.”

He watches her close her eyes, clutching the roll of paper towels as she does, and goes back to reading.

He’d known what had happened to her the moment he’d seen her. He had fought off the three boys who were responsible, but not before they’d put a bullet in him. He’d pulled them off of her, and wrestled the gun away from them. Shot them in the forehead. Shot them dead. And disposed of the bodies in a dumpster nearby, before getting her into a car. 

She had barely been responsive, but she’d told him. Not her parents. Not them. She wanted Clint. She wanted safety.

So he’d brought her here. He’d had to yell at Clint to leave, and had to lie to him to get him to calm down. That Klein kid should have waited to tell him. 

But, as he concentrates on the book in front of him again, he feels alright with what he did. He couldn’t have done anything less than what he did. 

He couldn’t. 

* * *

**Description of the above scene for those of you who skipped it because of its content : **Frank Castle is sitting by Kate Bishop's bedside in the SHIELD medi-bay and is offering her comfort after the assault. She has asked him not to tell Clint about what happened. He's gotten stitches where he was shot, and she's asked him to stay in the room so she can feel safer and so she can rest. 

* * *

 

“How many?”

Klein taps on some keys on the tablet he’s clutching like a lifevest, and looks up at Clint, who’s sitting in front of him, dark, purple bags under his eyes. He’s barely allowed himself to sleep after Frank had told him what had happened.

Or, rather a version of it. Clint knew that Frank had omitted parts of the tale, and he knew that it was because Kate had asked him to. He knew that Frank had dumped three bodies into the Hudson after pulling out some teeth.

Kate had been sleeping last time Clint had gone to see her, but he still seethed. He knew that this was going to happen when he’d gone and seen her, and he knew that he should have insisted, that he should have known better… But, with the matters currently at hand, he knew that he couldn’t let his emotions get the better of him. 

His train of thoughts is interrupted as Klein clears his throat. “I’ve located several SHIELD intelligence members, such as Leopold Fitz, Jessica Drew, Bobbi Morse and others, sir.” He pauses, and Clint sends a glare his way, as an unspoken order to continue. “Uh, but they are out of reach, sir. Fitz seems to be off planet for some reason, Drew is currently stuck somewhere in Bangladesh, whereas Bobbi Morse is in hiding in Jakarta. There’s no reinforcements, and no way to send an extraction team their way - all of SHIELD’s current ressources are being spent on rallying the troups and figuring out what-”

“What I should do to assume command without anyone knowing it’s me.” Clint rubs his eyes, before sighing. He’s tired and exhausted, but he soldiers on. He has to. “How about Agent 13?”

“She’s almost here, sir, she just pinged her badge in the entrance, and is going to be with you in a moment,” Klein replies and Clint nods.

“Miss Potts?”

“She’s busy discussing renewable energy sources with Darcy Lewis, sir, as well as Helen Cho. Doctor Cho survived the snap, and has managed to secure enough energy in Seoul to keep her lab afloat, and it would seem that the combination of the Cradle and the arc reactor could keep any future nuclear explosions from happening.”

Clint’s head turns to the side, and he feels the headache coming. He really needs to sleep. At some point. “How many is that, worldwide, again?” 

“We’ve managed to avoid three nuclear explosions in the US alone, and the Wakandan response teams have managed, along with Thor’s help, to contain seven other nuclear power plants from going critical. However, one plant did ignite, with its core becoming unstable, and has resulted in a wildfire in Brazil. The ANGRA-3 nuclear station declared an emergency evacuation six hours after the Event, when the entire response team vanished in the Event. The fires have already spread throughout the region, and with Rio de Janeiro less than a 100 miles away, a major evacuation of the city has already been greenlit by the authorities.”

Klein pauses, as Clint pushes his thumb and index into his eyes, exhaustion setting in. “The helicarrer Fury found lying in the dust, when we needed it in Sokovia - do we have the manpower to get it up and running?”

Shaking his head, Klein locks the tablet and looks away from it, biting his lower lip. “No, so far only technology and aid provided by the kingdom of Wakanda has been able to help fight the fires, but with only half the people… It more than likely that we’re going to lose some cities.”

A door opens and closes, and both men turn around to find Agent 13, geared up and hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She walks straight up to them, and turns to Clint immediately: “Ross is assuming command of the Bureau and the CIA, in absentia of a potential leader. I just came out of a security briefing with the CIA, and the three top candidates they had picked for the succession of our director have vanished or a declared missing. Ross has annexed the military power, as well as the governmental power and now the Bureau and the CIA.” She pauses, and hands an envelope to Clint. “If you want to get out of the country, you’re going to have to do it soon. Someone picked up your stay in New York, and there’s speculation going around about who could possibly have gotten the Punisher to leave his nest.”

Clint swears, raising his fist into the air. He takes the envelope from her hand, rips it open to find an address. “Where did you get this?”

“Fury. He compartmentalizes stuff,” she bites back, and almost smiles, but she notices Clint’s exhaustion and looks over at Klein before addressing him: “What’s the news on Potts and Cho’s work?”

Clint tunes out the conversation they begin as he reads the letter. It’s written in code, but it doesn’t take him long to decipher the key. It’s every other letter squared, and within a couple of minutes the letter is decoded. He looks over at Sharon and nods. “Agent 13, do you know when Ross will close American airspace?”

“Somewhere around the end of the week, they’re still bringing in soldiers from different hotspots around the world. He’s pulled out all active duty personnel that survived the Event from Iraq, Afghanistan, even the Thule base is being abandoned in favor of bringing everyone home to protect the homeland. Where do you need to go?” 

She looks over at him, at the letter, but Clint’s already pulled out a lighter from his pocket and has set the paper ablaze. He lets it go as it threatens to burn the tip of his fingers, and answers her question: “My contacts will be here tonight. I leave tonight. I can’t delay it any longer,” he says, as he looks to the left of the corrider they’re standing in, because the corridor leads to the medical bay.

“Your son?” Sharon asks, and Clint’s head whips to the side at the mention of Nathaniel.

“Nobody will ever know he is here, and if anyone asks, it’s one of the recruits’ kid.” Klein nods at this, as Clint continues speaking: “I cannot take him with me to Japan, nor can I ensure his safety if I leave him with anyone else but you. With Kate in the medbay and Frank nearby, I can leave him with a little bit more peace of mind than I otherwise would. I need to find out if my brother’s alive. I’ve lost almost everybody, Sharon - you saw what it does to people out there, those who are looting and destroying things. Klein has picked up a recent spike of suicides, when people realized there was nobody left - I can’t let Nathaniel fall into bad hands. I just can’t, I can’t. The only way I can know that he’s safe is if he stays here. If Frank can look after him. I’ll talk to Kate, Frank says that she wants to stay here, that’s the best goal I got. If you have a better idea, a safer idea, go ahead, let me know, because I’m out of options here.”

He’s heaving by the time he’s done talking. 

Sharon shakes her head. “I didn’t mean it like that, Barton. I know how hard this is, on everybody - remember, I lost people too. Communications out of the country are harder than ever, and I don’t even know what’s happened yet - I don’t think anyone knows. The only lead we have is Thor showing up around the world to restore power to big cities, or Wakanda sending out technology. We’re flying blind, almost literally, because the world has been reduced to a pile of stinking ash. You aren’t the only one who lost this fight, Clint,” she bites and Clint takes a step to stand right in front of her, in her face. 

He wants to strike out, to yell at her, but solely grunts before taking a step back. She sighs. 

“You’re exhausted - if you’re flying out tonight, you should go talk to your son, and then go find Kate and tell her what’s going on. You’re going to lead SHIELD, you can’t do that in the state you’re in currently, Barton. Get a grip. We all lost someone, that doesn’t make you any less special than what you were before.”

Her words sting, but she’s right. Clint nods. “I’m sorry I snapped at you-”

“Don’t apologize, Clint. You’ve got your own battles, and I don’t even want to know what you’re getting into nor what Fury has got planned until you’ve managed to secure your position as Director of SHIELD. Ross will go for that position too, and if he manages to secure the military, the FBI, the CIA as well as SHIELD, it’ll only be a matter of weeks before he gets the NSA and Homeland too, and we can’t let that happen. 

He’s not the man for the job, and yet here he is, gathering more and more power as we speak. I know our world is in ruins, but it shouldn’t be a man like him leading it. It should be a man like you.”

She presses her index into Clint’s chest, pushing him a step backwards, as Klein raises his eyebrows, shocked.

“Fury chose you to lead this team, he chose you as his first pick back when he talked about creating the Avengers. You have got to live up to that, even though you’ve lost more people than me. Nobody will tell you that’s not a high price, but you have to get your ass to Japan before everything goes more to shit than it already has!”

* * *

Lucky’s lying in the dog bed, a stuffed animal lying by his side. Some of the physicians that were on site had looked at his eye, and he’s doing better now. There won’t be any complications with the wound, but he’s lost the eye entirely. Clint had told them they had done an amazing job.

Clint is currently sitting on a couch, in the very same room Ross had once shown footage to the other Avengers of the battle of New York, Sokovia and Johannesburg. He’s holding a book up, the front page half eaten away but Nathaniel, and Lila and Cooper before him, and he’s reading out loud. Nathaniel can recognize his name and spell it out - he always draws the N backwards - and he almost knows this particular story by heart, by now.

There’s a bear on the front page. Penny and dime, it says. 

Clint’s half lying, half sitting, Nathaniel nestled against his chest, slightly hot because he’s almost gone to sleep, a slight sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. Clint can feel Nate’s breathing against his chest, and it’s helping him keep calm. Frank had been around earlier, but he’d left to go back to downtown - he had his rounds to keep to, and Kate was doing better. Physically, at least.

Clint had tried to talk to her, but she had asked him to leave again, as she only wanted to speak with Pepper Potts and with the nurse who had been taking care of her since Frank had brought her in.

Turning the page of the children’s book, Clint watches some scribbles he thinks Cooper had made inside. The bear was now covered in green and red permanent marker scribbles, and he remembered how frustrated he had been at Cooper when he’d done it. Now, his thumb brushes over the marks and he lets out a long breath, inhaling after. Nathaniel squirms around, and slides slightly to the side, so he’s lying between Clint and the back of the couch.

Clint feels Nathaniel’s big eyes on him, so he turns his head towards his youngest. “What?” he asks, trying to grin, trying to have an open mind, and Nathaniel pushes himself around so he’s sitting upright, apparently not interested in the book anymore.

“Aunt Pepper says you’re going away,” Nathaniel starts, and Clint nods. He’s leaving his son the time to let it out. “I don’t want you to go, but she says- she- she says it is because you are going to go find mom.” There’s a pause, and a sharp intake of breath, as Nathaniel fiddles with the hem of Clint’s sleeve. “Do you know where mommy is?”

Clint closes the book, and lies it on his stomach, as he pulls his other arm back behind his neck and looks at the ceiling, letting Nathaniel play with the loose threads of his t-shirt as he does so.

“I don’t know where she is, yet. I think someone out there, will know. Many years ago, there was this one lady I worked with, she was called Carol- remember those pictures, in the picture book, where mommy and I were wearing flowers in our hair? There’s a picture of Carol next to it-”

“With the green shirt!”

Clint smiles. “Yeah, with the green shirt. Carol is- she’s so powerful, Nate. You know, daddy used to work with Thor, and he’s a god. He’s been alive for 1500 years, and he can control the thunder and the rain, but Carol? She was so powerful, I’d never seen anything like it. She could fly, and she could blast power from her hands, I admired her. Laura thought I was in love with her, but I was actually more jealous. I’m all nostalgic now, that I think about her, it’s been so long…” Clint finishes, letting the sentence end, as he looks at Nathaniel who’s frowning.

“What’s nostalgia?” 

Chortling, Clint adjusts his position on the couch and thinks. “It’s- it’s- it’s when you can walk through the past again, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore,” he tries to explain, and the explanation apparently suits Nathaniel well enough, as he nods.

“She is very pretty, in the picture,” Nathaniel then continues, and Clint nods.

“I wanted to be her, Nate. She was everything I ever wanted to be - a captain, strong, independent, everybody respected her and she could get anyone to listen to her if she tried hard enough. I mean, Steve Rogers is one of my other idols too, but until I met him some years ago, I’d always known him to be anything else but a legend. Carol she was- she was fire made flesh,” Clint continues, and Nathaniel laughs.

“Fire is hot!” he claims, and Clint nods, seriously, with a glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Yes, it is!” He takes a moment, pushing his son towards his chest, Nathaniel letting go of the loose thread, looking up at his father’s face.

“Will Katie stay here?” Nathaniel asks, pushing onto Clint’s side with his feet, trying to get more comfortable. Clint shuffles to the side to allow his son more space on the couch.

He nods. “She is going to stay here, Pepper promised that she would be safe here.”

“And Lucky?”

At the mention of his name, Lucky’s head pops up and his mouth opens up, as if he’s smiling at them. Clint smiles back.

“Lucky is going to stay here too,” he mutters, turning his head to kiss his son’s hair, but Nathaniel moves out of the way with a disgruntled face, before bending forward to lie across Clint’s stomach. “He’s going to look after you, and he’s going to make sure that nothing happens to you.”

“Frank said that Kate got hurt, is she better now?” Nathaniel asks, and Clint nods, stroking his son’s back, as Nathaniel lies across his stomach.

“She is, but it will take some time. I think it’s best if you stay here with her,” he says, and Nathaniel turns his head, resting it on Clint’s chest.

“To protect her?” Nathaniel asks, innocently, slightly spitting at Clint as he pronounces the P in protect. Clint frowns, strokes the spit ball off his face with the back of his hand and nods.

“You protect her, and she will protect you. I’m going to give her something, so she can learn to protect herself too.”

“Is it one of your bows?”

Clint smiles at his son’s intelligence, and nods. “Yes, it’s one of my bows. I’m not taking them with me where I’m going, because Auntie Nat will recognize me if I do, and I don’t want her to know it’s me.”

“Is it like play hide and seek?”

“Exactly like that. I have a job to do, and I can’t do it if people know where I am, so I have to hide. Exactly like hide and seek, Nate,” Clint replies, as he strokes Nathaniel’s back once more, before beginning to scratch it. Immediately, Nathaniel’s face goes from thoughtful to sweet bliss, his back arching upwards like that of a cat when you start scratching it, and he exclaims that he wants more. 

So Clint obliges, and scratches his son’s back for a couple of minutes, while watching Lucky. It doesn’t take long for Nathaniel’s eyes to start closing, and before Clint has managed to count to a hundred, Nathaniel is out like a light. 

“I’ll see you soon again,” Clint whispers to his son, as he sits forward, readjusting Nathaniel against his chest, bringing him to his room, Lucky following close behind. “I promise I’ll find a way to bring your momma and your sister and your brother back,” he whispers, holding his son - his drooling son - against his shirt, and making his way to the room they’ve been sleeping in since he arrived on location. 

There isn’t much, but Nathaniel’s toys and clothes are occupying most of the space. Clint has hidden the bows away in the closet, and the guns are locked up in the weapon’s armory downstairs. The katana is still in the room, as is the silken garb Clint will take with him when Maya Lopez shows up.

He isn’t sure if he’s ready to leave his son behind yet, but he hopes he is. He hopes. For a big responsibility has just befallen him, and he needs to lead SHIELD, as if he has no family. 

* * *

Some hours have past, and Nathaniel is lying asleep in his bed. Clint has left him behind in favor of the training room, and is currently working on his technical skills with… well, with a sword.

He hasn’t used it in years - decades, really. He’s held a bow and knives in his hand for years, all sorts of bows and knives and guns and other weapons, but a katana? That is something he hasn’t really trained with in years.

There’s sweat pearling on his forehead, and he can feel the droplets running down his back. The wooden bokken he’s holding in his hands is light and swift. He’s left the actual sword back in his room, as he knows not to meddle with the blade until it’s time to use it. Respect the blade, he remembers Maya teaching him, back when he’d been a teenager. He’s removed his shirt, and is standing in the middle of the room in his training pants, practicing the sweeping motions of kendo.

His hands are shaking slightly whenever he finishes a motion, and as he tries to concentrate on his breathing, he realizes that he’s heaving for air more than usual. He’s fallen out of shape, and he’ll need to build back up endurance if he’s to lead SHIELD. He’s getting old, he knows that much, but that never stopped Stark from facing the dangers first hand. Literally. Gritting his teeth together, Clint goes through the motions again, the sound of the wooden sword whipping through the air.

He turns around when he hears something shuffle against the mattresses he’s laid out, and points the bokken at the figure. It’s Kate, he realizes, and he immediately drops his posture, readjusting himself. He wants to put his shirt back on, he realizes, but it’s lying back in the changing room, so he’ll have to do this like this.

Clint notices Kate staring at his chest - there’s the scar from Loki’s scepter in between his pectorals, inching its way outwards, responding to whatever cataclysmic event had triggered the Event, and whenever it starts itching terribly, he knows it’s expanding. There’s the scar on his shoulder from where Chisholm had shot him with an arrow, when he was younger, and there are several scars and marks laid out across his body, like a puzzle explaining his life. He knows, soon enough, the scars on his left arm will be hidden away permanently, but he doesn’t mind it.

“Where did you learn to use a katana?” Kate finally asks, when she manages to look up at Clint’s face. He strokes the back of his hand against his temple, droplets of sweat being swept away as he does so.

He frowns, thinking back. “I started using swords in the circus, when I trained under a man called the Swordsman, he was French. After that, I joined the army, got discharged because of my hearing,” he points at his ears, “and met someone who taught me how to use my body and this,” he points at the bokken, as a metaphor for the real deal. “She was a real tough teacher, but she taught me self discipline where the army failed to.”

Kate nods, and steps onto the training mats. She’s barefoot, Clint notices, and is wearing some of the standard issued SHIELD gear. Her shirt fits her tightly, but her pants are loose. He doesn’t ask how she’s feeling, because he knows that’s not why she’s here. 

“Want to try?” he suggests, and she nods. Her dark ebony hair is in a ponytail, and he thinks, as he walks over to where the other bokken are laid out, if he should ask her to make a bun instead. When he turns to face her, another wooden sword in hand, he notices she’s done exactly that, and is readjusting the elastic tightly against her scalp, so as to ensure that none of her hair gets in her way. He walks up to her, and hands her the handle of the wooden sword, which grips with two hands. “Have you ever tried-”

“My father ensured Laura and I knew the basics,” she interrupts, and a slight smile spreads across her face as she measures the strength of the bokken in her hand. She gives it a swing, and Clint watches her go. Her feet are not perfectly positioned, but he can see that she’s gotten training, and that she knows how to keep her center of gravity centered in her body. 

“Then, lets see what good we are,” Clint mutters, as he adjusts his grip on his bokken, moving forward so that there is only a couple of feet between them.

They both gently tap each other’s sword, and when they do, they engage in a dance of strength and control - Clint hadn’t thought Kate would be so elegant, but she’s definitely had the training now, he realizes. She’s faster than he expected too, and she even manages to kick his arm with the edge of the wooden sword, before he counters, slamming it against her ribcage - not too hard, though, he wouldn’t want to hurt her for real. 

They continue for a while, exchanging blows, moving back and forth, until Clint is out of breath again, his feet shuffling against the plastic mats, and suddenly, before he’s realized what’s happened, she smacks him across the temple with the bokken, and he gets the air kicked out of him at the impact. 

“Oh fu- I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” she exclaims, letting go of the sword, as Clint puts his hand to his face, to see if she’s made him bleed. By the stain on his fingers, he can judge that yes, he is now bleeding, and it doesn’t take long either for him to realize that the pumping of the blood around the area she impacted is blowing up a bruise. 

He stutters as he replies to her. “I’m good, but d’you- go fetch some ice before my eye closes up entirely?” he says, as he puts down his palm on the area, to keep it from blowing up too much, keeping pressure on it. Kate runs off, and he sits down on the mat, laying his bokken respectfully to his side, as he holds his head slightly backwards. 

Kate comes back with a pack of medical ice, which she cracks open, giving it to Clint so he can exchange his palm for it, and as soon as the cold takes over, he feels his body reacting to it. Hopefully, all he’ll get is a black eye and no swelling. He laughs at her, sniffling in, swallowing afterwards, and looks at her with his other eye.

“How are you doing?” he says, as she fumbles with a first aid kit. She pulls out a cotton pad and some antiseptic, and moves closer to him, resting on her knees as she instructs him to remove the ice pack.

She doesn’t reply until she’s poured the antiseptic on the pad. “I’m feeling better,” she says, quietly, almost too quietly for Clint to hear it, but before he can answer she’s applied the antiseptic to the wound. Clint feels the pain and hisses, a sharp intake of air running through his body as he feels the product working. 

She dabs it on a couple of times, before picking another cotton pad and repeating the motions. “It’s not deep or anything, you won’t even need stitches,” she says, cleaning up the wound as best she can, before taking his wrist and guiding his hand and ice pack back to the level of his face. He understands, and applies the cold pack against his face again. The drumming of his heart rhythm has also calmed down a bit.

“I wanted to go out and see what- what had happened, out there,” Kate says, rolling up the cotton pads and putting them to the side, on the mat, closing the first aid kit and the bottle of antiseptic. She’s refusing to make eye contact with Clint, and he gives her that. She continues, “I didn’t realize it was that bad until... “

“People are animals,” Clint finishes, and she looks up, her eyes slightly glazed over. He hasn’t acknowledged what’s happened to her, although he thinks he knows from what has been told him by others, but it’s her choice to open up to him. If she doesn’t feel like saying it now, he won’t press her.  

“You’re leaving, Klein said,” she says then, changing the subject, and he nods. “You can’t lead SHIELD, this-” she motions to the training room, meaning SHIELD itself, “from here?”

“No… It’s too dangerous to stay here. Secretary Ross will come looking for me here, and the others- Natasha, Steve… They’ll come looking too. They can’t know I’m alive,” he tells her, finally making eye contact with her, and she nods after a couple of seconds.

“To protect me and Nathaniel,” she assumes, and he nods.

“There’s something I want you to have,” Clint says, as he pushes himself to a standing position. Kate picks up the first aid kit and walks over to the wooden holders, where she places the two bokkens and follows Clint back out of the room. There’s a case standing on the floor next to the door to the changing rooms, and Clint bends forward, clicking the case open.

He puts out his hand, indicating Kate should open it, and she bends forward, pulling the lid open. She gasps, as she sees what’s inside - she recognizes it from pictures. It’s the bow Clint had in Sokovia, she’s sure of it. It’s made of carbon, and it is foldable as well. She looks up at him, unsure of what to say.

“I’m not going to be using this where I’m going,” he starts, “I’ll be working with the blades. I couldn’t think of a better person to inherit this bow,” he points to it, “than you. I know you’re practicing archery too, and that you’ll learn to pull back the draw weight as soon as your upper body gets strong enough,” he gives her a look when she looks slightly offended, “it’s over 75 pounds in draw strength, you’ll need plenty of back muscles for that.”

She picks it up, takes a step back, and swings it open. It snaps out, stringed and ready to use, and she gets herself into position, pulling at the string as she does. Clint, still holding the ice pack against his forehead smiles when he sees her struggle to pull back the string. “I also got you this,” he says, turning around, going into the locker room, and coming out with another case.

Kate puts down the first recurve bow, and opens the case, revealing a compound bow. “Is this-”

“It’s a Mathews Apex, I’ve had it for over ten years. I had it with me, when Thor showed up the first time,” he explains, as he points to the arrows that are lying next to it. “This is the arrow I nocked when Phil asked me to shoot at him, but then I decided not to,” he laughs.

Kate looks over at him, incredulous. “Why are you giving me this?”

He shrugs. “There’s got to be someone out there looking after the world, and since I’m not going to go by Hawkeye anymore, I thought maybe… Well, maybe you’d do it.” He readjusts the ice pack against his forehead, and watches as Kate strokes the second bow.

“You want me to be Hawkeye?”

“If Steve Rogers comes knocking on this door looking for a Hawkeye, he’ll find you instead. Natasha will recognize the bows from Waverly, and she’ll know that you got them from… Well, from home. They won’t know I’m alive, but I can’t let the sixth Avenger be forgotten,” he smiles. “I wasn’t there to fight this Thanos guy because I was in house arrest. If someone’s going to replace me on the team, who better than you? I mean, you don’t have to, and you’ll probably need more training but- but- well, what I’m saying is, this is yours. These are yours. If you want them, that is,” he finishes, clearing his throat, sounding slightly embarrassed.

Kate is… well, she’s beaming. She hasn’t said a word in a while, but then, she turns around, and picks up the first bow, holding it horizontally, and admiring the work on the string and the handle and the risers. She clutches it in one hand and looks up at Clint.

“I’ll learn how to use these properly, I promise.”

* * *

“I told you that you wouldn’t be able to break into the facility, no matter how hard you tried.”

There’s a huff and a puff and then a middle finger gets raised at him, and Clint chuckles. “Now, if you play nice, we’ll let you live.”

Three other surviving SHIELD agents are pointing guns at the intruders, but Clint hasn’t bothered.

Zelda DuBois signs to Maya Lopez that,  **You owe me ten bucks** .

Then, they both lift their hands up above their heads, and watch as Clint orders the agents to lower their weapons. “Honestly though, what were you expecting? For it to be a revolving door in a shitty motel or something?” he asks, and the two women shrug.

Princess Python has exchanged her snakeskin jacket for an alligator one, the leatherlike material sitting on her shoulders like it was meant to be there, and Maya is wearing a tank top underneath a leather jacket. They both look like they’re done with the situation, but as soon as Clint dismisses the soldiers and reports to Klein that, “My contacts are here,” both Maya Lopez’ and Zelda Dubois’ eyes light up.

“Let me give you the tour, ladies,” he begins, signing the words as he says them, and turns around, to take them to the general headquarters of the Avengers-turned SHIELD base.

Klein is leaning over the shoulder of a crop haired fellow SHIELD officer, one that Clint recognizes from the helicarrier during the Battle of New York, and by the look that he’s got on his face, Clint assumes that he is not playing Galaga this time around. 

Clint pushes the glass door open after scanning his ID-card on the keypad, and shows the two ladies inside. A display at the end of the room is lighting up in LEDs, where FRIDAY is welcoming their guests with a written signal rather than her regular audio messages. Maya smiles at it, and Clint recognizes the same feeling he’d had after finding out Stark had integrated deaf-friendly communication devices on side.

(He’d noticed them the first time he’d been there, to break Wanda out of the compound to bring her to Germany).

(Clint doesn’t want to think about Germany right now.)

**The last preparations need to be attended to here. This is where we hold meetings and discuss all the SHIELD-related things, the room is sealed in any and all ways possible,** he explains, motioning to the absence of cameras and to the electricity pulsing in the glass walls. That makes it impossible for anyone to eavesdrop on anything that’s happening inside the room, and that way, they know that if a leak is found, it came from one of the people in the room.

This is the room where Clint discussed his options with Tony Stark, after Steve Rogers had broken him out of the Raft. He’d negociated his surrender to Ross through Stark, with Stark providing the assistance of attorney Jennifer Walters on the case, and it was here that they had gone with the full cooperation method, as far as possible, what with Clint’s SHIELD security clearance.

The trial had been fast and swift - expedited too fast for his liking, but Ross had been satisfied with condemning him to two years’ home arrest. Tony had hidden the fact that Clint’s homestead was huge in the rapports, and so, when it came to figuring out the limits of his movements at home, the FBI officials had been miffed to see that he was free to go… about anywhere on his farmland. 

Scott Lang though. Poor Scott. He’d been fed to the wolves - not able to get such a good impression with Tony Stark vouching for him, and had been imprisoned in his tiny little house in San Francisco for the past two years.

**Do you know what the next steps are?** Maya signs, and Clint nods. He shows them the chairs that are placed in the room, nods at Klein and Galaga-guy, and sits down in front of Zelda and Maya, pulling out a file from a folder that’s been lying on the table. 

He clears his throat, even though he isn’t going to speak but sign, and begins:  **Back in the 1990s, when I was a SHIELD rookie, quickly climbing my way up the echelon, I attended a classified meeting with Agents Fury, Coulson, May, Colonel Danvers, Director Carter and Howard Stark. I was in my early twenties back then, but I got a seat around that table nonetheless.**

Clint straightens up, and opens the file in front of him. Some of the lines are classified, and he will destroy the paper as soon as Maya and Zelda are done reading it. He continues signing ahead:  **It was the failsafe, should anything catastrophic happen to Earth. We knew at that point that Colonel Danvers would have to leave for Hala, the home planet of an alien race, and we needed to ensure a way for us to call her back. This,** he pulls out the pager he’d brought from home with him to New York,  **is that. Director Fury activated the Marvel-protocol right after the Event took place, and it’s the last transmission we know for a fact he was behind, so it is our assessment that he did it in his last moments before turning to ash like everybody else involved in the incident.**

Zelda reads the document quietly, while Clint locks eye contact with Maya.

**The protocol involves one of us, me, Phil, Nick, Melinda, Peggy or Howard, taking control of SHIELD unilaterally. Phil Coulson died in the events leading to the Battle of New York, Nick Fury disappeared in the Event, Melinda May is gone on a mission of her own with SWORD, both Peggy and Howard have passed onto the next life. Which leaves me.** He pauses, and takes a deep breath. His hands are slightly shaking as he passes along another classified document.

The document lists five points to follow: 

_ January, 16th, 1990.  _

_ Director of Operations Margaret E. Carter, _ __  
_ Special Agent in Charge Nicholas J. Fury, _ __  
_ USAF Colonel Carol S. J. Danvers  _ __  
_ SHIELD Agent Phillip J. Coulson, level 7,  _ __  
_ SHIELD Agent Melinda Q. May, level 7 _ __  
_ Agent Clinton F. Barton, level 6 _ __  
_ CEO of Stark Industries, Howard A. W. Stark (civilian) _ __  
_ Strategic Scientific Reserve,  _ _  
_ __ Triskelion, Washington, D.C.

_                                         OPERATION BROKEN ARROW _

_ In the events of a worldwide annihilation, the following protocol is enforced to ensure the survival and continuation of the S.S.R. as an intelligence agency, outside of diplomatic and national enforcement. _

_ The members present will ensure the survival of the S.S.R. no matter the personal cost. _

_ The established protocol to maintain control of S.S.R. operations is as follows:  _

 

  * __Gather a team of surviving S.S.R. personnel.__


  * _Travel to S.S.R. base #32557038 in Yokohama, Japan and find The Tattoo Artist. Bring your approved signature weapon._


  * _Find the Tattoo Artist and inform him of your search for the Broken Arrow. He will ensure passation of powers and equip you with a physical attribute that the S.S.R. will recognize._


  * _This physical attribute will become your highest security clearance in all S.S.R. operations and instate you as Director of Operations of the S.S.R. All previous authorizations will be wiped from the systems and you will be locked in as only Director of the S.S.R.’s personnel, activities and equipments._


  * _Ensure that the S.S.R.’s mission to protect the Earth and its inhabitants is not corrupted by outside forces and hold the line until the Broken Arrow finds its target._



 

_ Signed by all members present, _

_ Director of Operations Margaret E. Carter, _ __  
_ Special Agent in Charge Nicholas J. Fury, _ __  
_ USAF Colonel Carol S. J. Danvers  _ __  
_ SHIELD Agent Phillip J. Coulson, level 7,  _ __  
_ SHIELD Agent Melinda Q. May, level 7 _ __  
_ Agent Clinton F. Barton, level 6 _ __  
_ CEO of Stark Industries, Howard A. W. Stark (civilian) _ __  
  


Clint watches the faces of the two women in front of him as they read the decade old piece of paper that he’s managed to hide from Ross, Stark and more through the years. Even when Loki spent weeks going through his mind, the God of Mischief never found the key to the Broken Arrow protocol.

Colonel Danvers thought it would be appropriate to bring in some US military codewords into the protocol, and thus, the Broken Arrow title was chosen. Clint knew it from his own days in the US military - when there’s a Broken Arrow, it means an accident involving nuclear material has happened. Usually nuclear bombs of some sort. Since Colonel Danvers had gotten her powers in an explosion involving otherwordly material, it was appropriate to borrow the slang for nuclear powers.

When they’re done reading, Clint nods to himself and takes the faded piece of paper back into the file he’s got in front of him, and closes it, slapping the elastic in place around the cardboard.

**I need your help to locate Leon Nunez,** he signs, as he looks at Maya.  **He is active in the Yokohama area, as he apprenticed with H-O-R-I-Y-O-S-H-I the third. They say he has a special power that gives his tattoos abilities.**

Zelda frowns, and speaks, rather than signing at Clint, “You’re going to get a tattoo?”

Shrugging, Clint nods. “Director Fury had an eye ripped out in the nineties, right before he assumed command of SHIELD. I’m not ripping one of my eyes out,” he mutters, while Maya Lopez looks down at her hands. 

He waits for her to look up, and when she does, she nods.  **I know where to find Nunez. When do we leave?**

**As soon as we can,** Clint replies. Zelda hands him the other piece of paper back, and this time, Clint pulls out a lighter from his back pocket and sets it ablaze.

As the fire slowly makes its way through the paper, Clint thinks to what this means. He remembers when Nick Fury assumed command of SHIELD, which was hijacked in parts by the instatement of yet another layer of diplomacy within SHIELD when Alexander Pierce joined the ranks. He remembers signing the agreement in all seven copies - one for each of the seats at the table that day.

He remembers coming home to Laura with the paper secured inside his jacket, so nobody could see it. He had spent the previous six months fighting for a spot inside SHIELD, to make up for the trouble he’d caused right after he had been recruited. He had spent three whole months in isolation, refusing to accept that he should come work for SHIELD. And in the space of less than a year, he had been entrusted with the possibility of one day become the Director of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, the faction that had trained and helped shape men like Captain America and the Howling Commandos.

He remembers sitting on his couch, in Bed Stuy, Laura’s head nestled in his lap as they watched television, Lucky sleeping at his feet, and thinking that he would never get the opportunity. That Fury, that Carter, that all the others would see him for what he really was - a circus freak who never managed to get any kind of degree or high school diploma, whose only talent was to shoot at moving targets and, every once in a while, kill the guy who needed to be killed.

Clint had done that, before SHIELD. After the army, he’d roamed around for some years, looking for an escape to the fear and anger he held in his heart after he had been dismissed, looking for a place to belong, looking for someone or something to pick him up. He’d met Maya, in a bar, in the deep corners of Hell’s Kitchen one night. She had looked at him once and told him to follow her if he wanted to do something right.

He has as much respect for the woman sitting in front of him now as he had back then. Maya Lopez pulled him out of a bad place. Sure, she helped him become a bounty hunter and assassin before he became a SHIELD agent, but she put that sword in his hands and gave him a way out of the darkness. Almost literally.

* * *

The quinjet that Klein has attributed to him is ready.

He knows it’s ready because FRIDAY told him already three minutes ago. Two minutes ago. One minute ago. And yet, het can’t bring himself to leave.

He’s sitting on Nathaniel’s bed, watching his son sleep in the glow of the night light. His youngest looks so peaceful, lying on his back, arms spread out, the bed cover pulled high so that he doesn’t get cold. If he pushes the bed covers away, he always catches a runny nose, Clint knows. He always checks on Nathaniel, if he’s up during the night, to make sure that his son is going to be alright in the morning.

He’s watched Nathaniel for a couple of minutes. He’s ready to go change, he’s ready to go step into this new part of his life, and yet, having to leave Nate behind… It’s breaking his heart. 

Bending forward, Clint puts his hand on Nathaniel’s head, kissing him gently on the temple. Nathaniel rummages slightly, moving at the contact, but doesn’t wake up and continues in the quiet, untroubled state of sleep he’s been in, since Clint came and helped him fall asleep with a nighttime story.

But he has to leave now, FRIDAY reminds him. So he gets up, and fights hard for the tears that are making their way to his eyes, and gently presses the door almost shut.

He follows the corridor down to his own room, right beside Nathaniel’s, and opens the door. The lights turn on quietly, the buzzing of the neon activating inside the glass panels, and he watches the silken garb laid out on a chair in front of him. Don’t lay it out on a bed, it looks like a dead man’s clothes, someone had told him, once, about costumes. It had probably been in the circus. Maybe it had been Zelda for all he knew. 

Crossing the short distance to the chair, he pulls off his shirt, then his pants. Picking each piece of garment delicately, he feels the fabric, feels the memories coming back to him, and looks at the different spots where he’s stitched a hole shut, or where knives, claws or bullets went through, as he roamed the cities and the world at night, hidden away in a dark costume.

He pulls on the pants, then the shirt, the vest. It feels familiar, and he even swears he can still smell the perfume of the last time he wore it, when he came home, shot in the gut and dying from his injury. Nicholas J. Fury had found him, in the hospital room he’d been put in, and offered him a job.  _ We monitor threats, Mister Barton. And we’re not sure if you are a threat, or if you can help us neutralize them _ , he’d said. Clint had spat his way, cringing as the pain radiated through his body, reminding him that he would die if he didn’t stay put, if the stitches and the medical aid didn’t hold.

He picks up the metallic shins, light and quiet, polished and shining in the light here, and attaches them behind his calf, before picking up the chest piece. He passes his head through the front and back pieces, attaching them at his sides with a simple knot,  before picking up the haori and draping it across his shoulders. The yellow golden silk belt falls on the floor as the fabric unfolds, and Clint gently kneels to pick it up. It feels so soft, oh so soft to the touch, and he feels all the bottled up rage again. He remembers when he used to put this on day after day, hiding from what he felt and what he was afraid of.

He ties a knot across his chest, and picks the armguards up from where they hang on the chair, and applies them to his left and right arms, one after the other. He can feel the pressure points again, he remembers where he’d get blisters from wearing it too long in the beginning, and wonders if he’ll get some new ones, now that his body has changed, over the course of the years. 

Finally, he looks at the silk satchel which carries the last piece of the traditional costume, but instead of opening it and putting on the last piece of the puzzle, he attaches it to his belt, picking up the scabbard containing his sword. Clint strikes his fingers along the edges of the wooden material, remembering the hesitation he’d felt when he had to tell Director Carter and all the other members of the Broken Arrow panel which weapon he’d pick, in case Doomsday happened.

He pulls out the katana of the saya with a swift motion, and as the light dances along the edge of the blade, he doesn’t feel one inch of regret in his body.

He picked the right weapon.

To fight whatever the Event was, he doesn’t need a bow. He needs a blade. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the Kate Bishop assault thing: The assault is a big part of Kate Bishop's backstory in the comics, and I wanted to introduce it to this story through the Event, because it's something I don't see addressed a lot in fanfiction portrayals of Kate. She is a **survivor** and she must be remembered as such. 
> 
> Let me know how you liked it in the comments <3
> 
> Next chapter will bring us out of the United States and into deeper territory, as far as Clint is concerned. As of today (November 21st, 2018), I haven't written in a couple of days because I've been so busy, but I am at 38,388 words, which means I am only lacking just under 12k to win. I can do that!
> 
> Again, whenever I need motivation, I come back to read your comments and see what your reactions are, and they are the best source of motivation one could hope for. Tell me what you liked, what you didn't, what made you smile or cringe or cry, or what you hope happens or anything you'd wish to see me do in the fic.
> 
> Thank you for being so supportive, my doves.


	5. Two weeks after the Event.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okinawa, Japan. It's time for Agent Barton to become Director Barton, but in order to achieve that, he needs to meet the Tattoo Artist. Will the people he needs to meet with in Japan be allies or enemies? And when he's faced with the faces of his old teammates, will Clint be able to keep up the lie about him still being alive?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your feedback on the last update made me so, so, so happy! I managed to churn out the rest of this chapter much faster after I saw that you guys liked the last one so much!  
> There's a bit of stuff going on in this chapter, so keep your eyes open for any and all cameos and name-drops (you guys know I love to weave a name or two in there, right?).  
> All I have to say is: enjoy!

As soon as the Quinjet is in the air, the trafic over the coms starts picking up. That’s how they know that airspace is being closely monitored, and that their window to get out of the country is slowly creeping shut. Maya Lopez is sitting in the back of the jet, with Princess Python sitting next to her. They’re signing to each other, and Clint has decided not to meddle.

He’s brought his bags, they’re all fastened in the hold of the Quinjet, and he’s the one sitting in the pilot’s seat. There’s a sticker on the side of the dashboard. It’s faded, and looks like it’s been ripped off but kept on sticking, so only parts of it managed to get off the carbon surface. ‘Jarvis is my co-pilot’, it had said, once upon a time. Clint’s hand had swayed above it as he’d entered the Quinjet, but had decided not to let the past make him doubt. 

He had to get on with the program.

They’re going to have to cross the entire Northern Territories - pass through the whole width of the United States in order to get to the Pacific Ocean, that they’ll cross to get into Japan. Maya had told him that she had a contact there and that the skies would be open when they’d land near Okinawa. Clint had also been told by Cameron Klein that there was a SHIELD-base stationed there, where the Quinjet could be parked safely and securely.

The main goal of the trip was to find the Tattoo Artist. The one called Eric Nuñez. He needed him in order to get processed as the leader of SHIELD.

As he’s sitting behind the commands of the ship, Clint thinks to a conversation he’d had with Pepper right before he’d gotten on the plane. She’d stood slightly to the side of the hangar, her lips pursed, phone clutched tight against her chest, a worried frown spread across her face. Her hair had been impeccable, pulled back in a tight ponytail, with not stray strands of hair whatsoever.

“Barton, I need to make sure you know what you’re asking of us,” she’d said. He’d stopped, and watched her, as she took in the suit he was wearing. It wasn’t SHIELD gear, and it wasn’t what she knew him for. It He carried the katana in one hand, and a duffel in the other, and she looked like she had been spooked by something. Clint knew why. He looked more like an assassin than an agent, in that clothing.

“I need you to know, that if Ross comes here, that if he marches down on this building, we might not have the manpower to keep them away. Even with Steve Rogers and God knows who else available in Wakanda, if they come here, asking for the leader of SHIELD, we won’t be able to keep them out forever. Klein, that helicarrier technician, me. There are people out there that know you’re alive, and if someone breaks the right bones or pulls at the right strings, the truth might come out. The truth about whose kid it is, I’ve got running around a secured Avengers base. How do you think I’m going to explain that to anyone who comes here, guns ablaze and armored tanks in their wake?”

She’d stopped there, her eyes asking him the real question: was she supposed to lie to his old team mates, if they showed up? She was using Ross as a cover to the question, but she was asking him if he wanted her to lie in the face of his team. Of his friends. Of the people who’d seen him bleed, who’d carried him through the Battle of New York and its convalescence. He’d become friends with all of them, and now… Well, he was asking her to lie to them for his sake.

Gripping the sword in his hand a little tighter, he’d looked her in the eyes and grimaced before speaking. “I can’t force you to a promise you can’t keep. I can only trust you, that if it comes to it, you’ll make the right decision.” He had paused, and looked around the room, around the empty corridors, at the quietness of the place - when Stark had still been here, before the Event, this place had been sprawling with life, like a military base and ready to fend into action at any given moment. But now, it was just as quiet as the halls of a museum at night. 

Clint sighed, before continuing: “You’re the only reason New York hasn’t descended into complete chaos, and the work you’re doing with Doctor Cho and Doctor Foster is vital to the survival of the world. There are stakes at risk here that are higher than the life of my kid, I know that, and it kills me to admit it. If it comes down to it, I need you to make sure that Kate and Nate get out of here. Get them to Frank, or somewhere else, get to Logan up in Canada for all I care, but get them out.”

Pepper had nodded, and they’d left it at that.

Sitting behind the console, Clint wonders if he should have hugged her goodbye there. She had looked the kind of vulnerable and strong you’d expect of a woman of her strength - the kind that would survive anything. With the possibility of Tony being dead somewhere, in outer space, she had barely nothing to hang on to, but here she was, putting on a show for the rest of the world to make sure that it survived, in spite of the Event that had ripped half of humanity off the face of the Earth.

* * *

Japan welcomes them to a certain degree. They land in a desolated SHIELD base, which had been shut down after the Vietnam war. The presence of 32 US military bases on the island had made their entrance into the territory slightly anxiety specked, but they’d managed to get in with the help of an insider.

Maya Lopez had refused to say who was behind the sudden blackout over the coms, but when Clint had walked out of the Quinjet, katana on his back, the black mask over his face to hide his identity, he’d almost laughed.

Almost.

Standing in the dusty hangar, lit up by a flickering neon in the corner, stood Danny Rand, heir and major shareholder of Rand Enterprises. He’s been missing since the events that shook New York and saw another Iron Fist show up, so finding him here in Japan surprises Clint to a certain extent. 

“Bet you didn’t expect to find the Immortal Iron Fist here,” Zelda purrs, as she walks out of the Quinjet. She’s got a small snake wrapped around her shoulders, and Clint had wondered where the hell she’d gotten it from - but he had thought better than to ask. She had been and always would be Princess Python, so he had no doubt whatsoever that the snake around her shoulders would come in handy to her at some point.

Behind her, Maya Lopez stands in what she’d chosen as her gear - under a velvet vest, she wore a black crop top, and had applied white paint of some kind to her face, marking a handprint across her nose, cheekbones and cheek.

Danny Rand was flanked by none other than Ward Meachum himself. 

Walking up to face the two men, Zelda purring at the snake on her shoulder and Maya signing something about surprises, Clint considers pulling off the mask to reveal himself. He weighs the pros and cons of doing so, as he crosses the little distance between him and them. If he takes off the mask, it’ll mean two more people to trust won’t reveal that he’s alive to anyone. Knowing where they are, and knowing who controls the US bases on the island, the temptation of giving up that information would probably come up at some point.

However, Clint’s gut tells him that he should trust the younger men. They look like they’ve been through hell, and for some reason, that reassures Clint. So, when he’s standing a couple of feet away from them, he takes a deep breath and raises his hands to remove the mask from his face. Immediately, Danny Rand falls into an attack position, forcing the Meachum boy to stand behind him. 

Before Clint can manage to pull off the hood across his face, Rand’s fists start glowing golden, and it stops him in his tracks - wasn’t- wait- wasn’t Colleen Wing the Immortal Iron Fist, now? The pause causes him a slight delay in responding to the incoming kick to his face, and Clint stumbles back, the air in his lungs being kicked out of him.

“Wait-” he calls, but a knock to the face pushes him further back, and he hears someone laugh - either Maya or Zelda, or both of them - and this time, he pulls out the sword from the scabbard on his back, and gets moving.

He can tell Danny has been trained in martial arts - he’s faster, probably stronger and more efficient than Clint ever would be in those kinds of arts, but Clint has the experience and reflexes of twenty years as a SHIELD agent, and the dexterity in his swordsmanship means that he catches Rand by surprise by switching the blade back and forth between his left and right hand. A kick flies past his head, which he ducks, before cutting through the jeans Rand is wearing. He barely has the time to say anything, the power coming from the younger man is blowing his mind - and the air out of him, for every punch he takes - but before he can call himself the loser of the fight, he manages to whip out the katana, and as it sings through the air, catching Rand off guard at the maneuver - it’s something you’d do with a longsword, not a katana - he stops the blade right in front of Danny’s throat.

Exhaling, Clint pulls off the helmet on his head with a swift motion and stutters a, “Stop fighting me, Rand!” as he manages to end the fight. 

Danny Rand’s eyes go through the five stages of grief in a second, before he pushes the blade away delicately and readjusts the vest on his shoulders. Clint sheathes the weapon against his back, and looks over at Ward, who’s figured out how to breathe again.

“Barton? As in Hawkeye? You’re still alive? Everyone’s looking for you-”

“I know, Rand, I know.” He takes a deep breath, and wipes away a pearl of sweat on his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, and looks at Rand. “I can explain while Echo here shows us the way to the Tattoo Artist.”

At the mention of the Artist, Rand frowns. “What do you need Leon for? Couldn’t the Crane Sisters do whatever you needed done?”

Maya and Zelda join them, as Ward does too, and Clint sighs, as he adjusts the grip on the mask in his hand. He shakes his head. “No, they couldn’t. The Event shook a lot of people and the trades have suffered from it. Besides, this isn’t something the Crane Sisters could do. I’m here on SHIELD business,” he explains, and Danny nods, cocking his chin at that.

“What business is that?”

“None of yours, sweetheart,” Zelda’s deep voice replies, as she smiles at him. “You’ll figure it out soon enough, but first, Barton here, needs to get to the Tattoo Artist. Echo knows where he is, but do you?”

Rand nods. “Yeah, I do. I can make sure you get there unnoticed by-”

“The US Military. They’re saying that Secretary Ross has taken over, is that true?” Ward finally breaks into the conversation, and the look on his face tells Clint that he’s worried. “They’re saying that they’ve gotten orders to go back to the mainland, that Ross is pulling everyone back, but he hasn’t said why. Five of the bases are already abandoned, when they all boarded the ships and took off to reach San Francisco within the next couple of weeks. There are some Colonels and Generals that are refusing to obey the orders coming from up high but-” Ward wipes his hand, as the little group starts walking towards the exit of the hangar, “is it true that Ross has got control over the Army, the Presidency as well as the FBI and the CIA?”

Clint nods. “Yeah, Agent 13 confirmed his overtaking of the leadership of both the Bureau and the Agency, and he’s gunning for the NSA and Homeland security as well. It’s only a matter of time before he controls that too, which is why we had to sneak out of the country like this. Thanks for getting us into Japanese airspace, by the way.”

“Not a problem,” Danny replies, looking at Echo, who hasn’t said anything since they set foot off the plane. Clint catches the look, and smiles.

“Unless you know sign language, it’s going to be hard to speak to her, she’s deaf.”

Danny lifts his hand and signs the words  **try me** to Clint, before looking over at Maya, whose eyes caught that. She smiles, and they moves places so that Danny is walking next to her. Ward has noticed the snake around Maya’s shoulders and a thin sheen of sweat has since appeared on his face.

“What are you here for?” he stutters at Clint, and Clint smiles before he replies.

“Ross is trying to take over all intelligence agencies in the United States, and we all know that there’s one more governmental agency that he wants to get his hands on - I’m not going to let him do that.” He looks over at Ward who processes the information, before nodding.

“SHIELD.”

“SHIELD needs a Director - same thing happened to Fury as happened to the Directors of the FBI, the NSA, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. It happened to the President of the United States too, which is how Ross has been able to scrambled into the empty spots and gather all the power in his lap. He can’t get SHIELD, there’s too many resources and secrets involved. Which is why, twenty years ago, there was a failsafe put in place to prevent that from happening,” Clint explains, and Ward huffs.

“Yeah, like that helped HYDRA from taking over from the inside.”

Stopping dead in his tracks, Clint forces all the others around him to stop too. He watches Ward, his eyes measuring him up and down, trying to figure out whether he should smack the kid for being a smartass or not. But then, he decides to go the diplomatic way, and resumes walking when he’s decided he’s not going to get angry at him. For he had made a fair point.

“HYDRA grew inside of SHIELD like a fever, set to cull the good things out of the Department. Fury noticed, and HYDRA died with its leader, when Natasha shot him point blank in the chest.”

They keep walking, heading to a black van, parked in the shade of the parking lot, and Clint frowns at it. “Is this how we’re going to get around here?”

“Beats walking,” Zelda says, as she interprets for Maya what’s about to happen. 

**It’s going to take a while to get the Tattoo Artist to come out of hiding,** she signs, hopping into the back of the van, giving Rand and Meachum one last mean look. Zelda follows her, the snake coiled on her back, making sure nobody grabs her from behind, and Clint motions for the passenger’s seat, inviting Ward to take it. However, the young business man shakes his head.

“I’ll uh- I’ll- I’ll sit in the back with- with them. Danny will get you around easier, and besides, if it comes to it, you guys know how to fight better than I do.” He swallows hard as the snake pokes its head out of the door and looks at him, but he manages to climb into the vehicle without too much hesitation.

Rand gets into the car to the driver’s seat, and as Clint gets installed into the passenger’s seat, he thinks to the motions that are going to be set in action over the next couple of days. 

Once he meets the Tattoo Artist, once he gets his mark, once he unlocks the position as Director of SHIELD, there will be no going back. All of a sudden, he misses his son. He misses his youngest, and wonders if he woke up, crying out for his father, his mother, his brother and his sister, and if he managed to fall asleep again.

Clint thinks to Kate, and to what happened to her. He thinks to how far away from them he is now, halfway across the globe, trying to figure out how to protect his life, his career, his secrets, from anyone and everyone. He sits in a car, beside someone he barely knows but has to trust. He sits next to Danny Rand, someone who had disappeared in a plane crash as a young boy and come back from the dead with the power to smach entire blocks to the ground.

He’s only a man, Clint realizes then and there. He doesn’t have a super suit, he doesn’t have a super-serum running through his blood, he doesn’t have a Hulk hidden in there somewhere, and he doesn’t even have the enhancements Natasha does. He’s the most vulnerable member of the team. Thor’s a God, for crying out loud.

And then, he remembers Nick Fury. Nick, who had been nothing more than a man too. Who had fought his way up through the ranks, through the sixties and seventies, who had fought the leadership of SHIELD all the way up until he stood at the very top of the agency. Nick who had fought tooth and nail for every single one of his agents, no matter their origin or their skillset, and who believed in humanity, even though his trust was hardly earned.

It kindles som of the faith Clint has in himself. If a person like Nick Fury can lead SHIELD successfully through the Battle of New York, through Ultron’s uprising, through a world invasion and more, then he can too. He’s got a lot to look up to and a lot of pressure on his shoulders, but he can do it. 

Nick Fury had faith in that little scrawny kid from Iowa back then. He’ll have faith in Agent Clint Barton of SHIELD too.

* * *

The tattoo shop they enter looks as if it hasn’t changed in over three hundred years. Maybe less, but the point still stands: it looks as though there are no modern technologies inside, and it sets Clint off.

He isn’t sure if this is the right place, but both Maya Lopez and Danny Rand have assured him that León Nuñez would be inside. He had survived the Event - something that some of the American military soldiers they’d passed called the Snap, for a reason Clint wasn’t sure yet - and was ready to receive the up and coming Director of SHIELD.

The little bell sitting on the sliding door had rung when Clint had pulled the door open, but the absence of any sort of human presence behind the thin walls was worrying Clint - right up until another part of the wall opened up, revealing a secret opening. León Nuñez was younger than Clint had expected to be - he looked to be in his early thirties, maybe, no more than 35 at least. He had long, silky black hair, held tightly in a ponytail, hanging over his shoulders. It was long enough to reach under his shoulders, and looked like he took care of it.

He was wearing a white linen shirt, with matching trousers in the same fabric, and looked like he had just wandered into the room aimlessly. Right up until his gaze stopped on Maya Lopez standing next to Clint, and he smiled.

In flawless and quick sign language, he motioned that  **You brought me another recruit** .

Looking around, Clint wondered if it was time for him to introduce himself, but as if he knew, Nuñez nodded at him, cocking his head towards him: “I know who you are, Hawkeye. You cannot fool the Artist’s eye.”

Nuñez pauses, as his eyes measure Clint up, before he purses his lips, motioning to Clint’s attire, motioning at Maya that  **You gave an American the gift of Ronin?**

Maya scoffs silently, watching Zelda go sit in the back of the shop on a tiny, little wooden stool. She uncoils the snake from around her shoulders as she does so, and Clint realizes that Danny Rand and Ward Meachum have entered the premises too, standing slightly to the side in the room, making sure that they’ve got an eye on everyone inside.

Waving Nuñez’ comment off, Maya signs back at him:  **He was lost and needed a name so he could clear his own. I had no more use of Ronin, so the name passed onto him. Alexei didn’t need it anymore either, and we know that Eric won’t be needing it either. Eric hasn’t been seen since the Event anyway** , she motions, nonchalantly.

Clint frowns. Eric?

**E-R-I-C?** He signs, and Maya smiles at him. The white paint on her face is cracking slightly in the edges of her dimples, and she motions to Nuñez, who finally greets Clint by name.

“Agent Barton, the clothes you are wearing have not been yours forever and will not be. Another person SHIELD monitors will need the name of Ronin in the future, but it is not in this timeline,” Nuñez explains, and Clint’s frown deepens - this timeline? What did that mean? He’s just about to answer, when Nuñez speaks up again. “Do not fret, my friend. You have been brought here for a reason, the same as Nicholas Fury was, when he ascended to the leader role for SHIELD. It saddens me to hear that Director Fury is no more, but it was only a matter of time.”

Clint wants to interrupt - he wants to understand what is going on, but when he looks over at Danny Rand for any sign or any clue as to what is going on, Rand simply shrugs, lifting his shoulders and letting them down, exposing his hands as if telling Clint to just go with it. 

Clint had thought many times about who this Tattoo Artist was and why he was so special. As much as he had looked, back in the nineties, when he had just signed the paperwork which was the reason for him being here now, he had tried to figure out what the magic trick was. Why was the Tattoo Artist so interesting for them? Why was the Tattoo Artist the only one who could make sure that the next Director of SHIELD wouldn’t be usurped or pushed out of the way?

“You will not understand, Agent Barton,” Nuñez interrupts, and Clint’s head whips towards him. It was as if he had heard his thoughts. As soon as that comment finishes inside his head, he sees Nuñez smile, and then when the Artist taps his temple, as if to indicate that he knows, Clint smiles too.

There are more things between Heaven and Earth than simple soldiers and spies, and he’s experienced the magic himself. 

“You are here for a procedure, yes?” Nuñez says, motioning to the opening in the wall through which he came. Nodding, Clint looks over his shoulder, insecure about following the man, but when none of the others seem to react, he takes a deep breath.

The moment the sliding door shuts behind him, it sounds like the click of his fate sealing in place.

There’s a quiet couple of seconds, before Clint realizes that León Nuñez is staring at him.

“You will need to remove everything above the golden belt, Agent Barton,” Nuñez instructs, motioning from his navel and upwards. Clint hesitates for a half a second, then slowly begins to undo the knots from the armguards, quietly and gently handing them over to Nuñez. For a second, Clint feels like the gold on the edges of the armguards shimmers, but it must have been an effect from the light in the room - reflections and such. As Nuñez places the armguards, and then the chest piece across a chair, Clint removes the silken robes, revealing his chest and his arms.

Turning around after delicately folding the fabric, Nuñez gazes at Clint’s chest. “A God did this to you, mmm?” he says, placing his cold fingers on top of the scar, that, as Clint looks down, has expanded a bit further. Clint nods. “As long as this,” Nuñez motions around, to the sky, “is going on, it will continue to expand. You will feel the elemental magic flow through you, as it does through Doctors Foster, Cho and Selvig, until the energy is purged from your being. I cannot stop the mark from spreading, but I can assure your transition into your new role. Are you ready to ascend to the last level of SHIELD, Agent Barton?”

The change of tone catches Clint off guard, but when Nuñez removes his fingers from his chest, it feels like he’s made it back to reality again. It’s a snap back to the real, to his body, to whatever it was that he was feeling at that moment, as if, for but an instant, he had been transported to another place in the Universe, where magic and elements and whatever Loki had put in his head suddenly made sense. Clint realizes he’s hyperventilating, and counts to three as he tries to steady his breathing.

“Yes, I am,” he confirms, as Nuñez motions for him to lie down onto a mattress on the floor. It is nicer to sit on that it looks, and Clint quickly feels himself comfortable on it, right up until he sees the tools Nuñez has been preparing at his workstation.

“Have you ever gotten needlework, Agent Barton?” Clint shakes his head. “They say that the Tattoo Artist can bring memories to life, and cement people in the world. It isn’t a spell and it isn’t magic, it’s a lot of superstition - but I only tattoo the people whose minds can handle the ink. For my art is not the same as your regular tattoo parlor - if you wanted a tattoo to celebrate your skill at SHIELD or your missing wife, you would not have gone to the Crane Sisters and then to me.”  Nuñez gives Clint a smile, and suddenly Clint feels like he’s looking at an Elder God, the same way he would see Loki, in moments of clarity while he was under his control. The same way that he knew there was something more lying under the human appearance. The smile isn’t human, and for a moment, it throws Clint off - is this the right place? Can he trust León Nuñez? Can he trust the people out in the front of the store? 

“Do not worry, it won’t take long,” Nuñez replies, again, as if he had just noticed what was going on inside Clint’s mind. “Do you know what you wish to get?” he asks, motioning to the art plastered against the walls, delicate swings of a pencil and of a brush and black ink a mosaic of colors and motifs which catches Clint off guard. That wasn’t there a second ago, was it?

“I’m not sure,” Clint says, quietly, trying to not provoke any reaction whatsoever. Nuñez smiles again, and this time, all the fear and all the suspicion Clint seemed to have for him is gone. He’s just doing his job, and he will do it well. SHIELD, the S.S.R. knew about his work - it would go just fine. 

If he sees the gold of his armor shine behind Nuñez’ back, he’ll think back later to it just being a reflection of the candlelights.

“Don’t worry,” Nuñez replies, “the needles usually know what you want before you do yourself.”

* * *

The sliding door pulls away in front of him, and Clint watches as Danny Rand leaps to his feet, followed by Zelda DuBois who both come to look at the tattoo on his arm. He had barely felt the needlework, as if Nuñez’ had calmed his mind and his presence, for the sake of keeping him still. Clint had gotten a tattoo, once, when he was very young, in a tattoo parlor that was too dirty to be sanitary, and he’d regretted it almost the minute he had walked out of there. An arrow tip with a chevron, on his left clavicle, a testament to his skill as a circus artist.

The older guys in the circus had told him that it was badass to have tattoos, and if he decided to get his whole arms done, no ladies would be able to resist him. He’d gone in there and promised the artist a private show in return for the free ink.

When he’d gotten into SHIELD, the doctors and the medics and even Phil Coulson had asked him if he wanted to get the ink removed. He’d said yes without a single second’s hesitation. 

This time though, it feels different. It’s almost as if he can feel the snake moving against his skin - the work had taken longer than he’d thought, but the result was amazing. The ink began in the middle of his left pectoral, specks of green color gathering together, mixing with the mark Loki’s scepter and the Mind Stone had left on his body, and joined with a blue, almost grey, color on top of his shoulder, where Ronin’s mask and face laid, gazing out onto the world. Snake scales started sprouting from beneath the metal texture, the darkness and the grey oozing out into a natural look, coiling around his arm, around the protruding veins he had on his forearm, holding the power in, instating him as a defender.

“How did-”

Rand goes to touch the ink, but Clint shakes his head, “Don’t, it needs to heal first,” interrupting the gesture before it’s even happened.

He isn’t sure what Nuñez did to him, but he can feel it. Inside of him. The power and the responsibility of it all - it’s as if the Tattoo Artist had given him the confidence to step into the role as Director of SHIELD.

“I heard that he could do amazing things,” Rand starts, “There was even a rumor that his tattoos would give their bearer special powers,” he says, mostly to himself, as his fingers hover over Clint’s forearm and shoulder.

León Nuñez moves out of the back room, pulling the elastic band from the ponytail as he does. “Hasn’t anyone told you that rumors are dangerous, Mister Rand?” he asks, as he readjusts the dark, black locks in a ponytail on the back of his head.

Clint looks over at Maya, who nods at him, as she smiles. She’s reapplied the white mark on her face while he was getting the ink done, and when he looks over at the snake Zelda had brought along, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

“What now?” he asks, as Nuñez walks over to him, to apply some cream to the sore patches of skin.

“SHIELD will instate you as new Director. There is a station on the island who will serve as your first base. It is there Director Fury went, after I made sure his signature mark would not be replicated.”

“Wait- what? What did you do? I thought his eye was like-”

“Oh, no, when he lost his eye, it was not white on the inside. In order to secure the secrets of SHIELD properly, we had to make sure that nobody knew what it truly looked like. Once Nick Fury put on that eyepatch, after he left this very building, the eye that Alexander Pierce and HYDRA had recorded was gone, replaced by a white pupil and a white iris. My work,” Nuñez replies, pointing to himself and to his own eye, as if to indicate the work. Frowning, Clint almost feels the questions bubbling in his mind, and before he can ask him how, Nuñez interrupts his train of thought again: “Do not worry, Agent Barton. As soon as you become Director Barton, there will no unanswered questions left.”

* * *

The old abandoned SHIELD base they’ve hidden the Quinjet in feels different, when Clint walks into it again. He’s placed the Ronin mask on his face again, refusing to reveal his identity to more people than necessary - he can feel the tingle of the ink against his skin, and he isn’t sure if it’s his brain playing tricks on him or not, but the snake feels alive against his skin.

They park the van in the same spot as before, but this time, he is followed by Danny Rand and Ward Meachum, and not Zelda DuBois and Maya Lopez.

Both the ladies had decided to stay behind with Nuñez, feeling more welcome on the island of Okinawa than on American soil. Clint had no power over their decisions, but when Maya Lopez, when the one person he had learned everything from, took him aside to tell him to be careful and to not use the name of Ronin in vain, he had felt a pinch in his heart.

As if this was goodbye forever, as if he would never see her again, as if this was the last time they would ever stand face to face. She was older than him, yes, but she knew how to defend herself. And with Zelda with her, they would be fine.

She had handed him the katana from the backseat of the van, and had looked into his eyes, straight through the whiteout lenses of the mask, and known. The moment that piece of SHIELD tech recognized the work of the Tattoo Artist and linked it to Clint, he wouldn’t be just his own man anymore.

He would be the leader of SHIELD, and he would have more power than Thaddeus Ross could ever dream of achieving. 

Clint leaves Danny Rand and Ward Meachum in the cold air of the hangar, as he steps into the Quinjet. When he is finally alone inside, he removes the helmet. He can already feel that his hair is going to be a problem when he pulls it on and off all the time, and is already thinking about doing something about it. It will have to wait until he is back on American ground first, though.

He walks to the pilot’s seat, where all the commands sit on the dashboard, and turns the engines on. A slight buzz echoes in his hearing aids, and he turns around to find a light up hologram asking for him to identify himself, as it has apparently detected the presence of an unauthorized presence on board the ship. Clint can recognize the heat signature as his own, so he undoes the knots from the armguards, and pulls off the haori from his shoulders, revealing the newly applied tattoo.

The laser beams from the hologram envelop him entirely, and he hears FRIDAY’s voice activating - she’s taken over SHIELD’s intelligence and is the leading AI on board the Quinjet now. It was her, who had taken over the job, when Cameron Klein had greenlit her operations. If JARVIS had managed to hold his ground agasint Ultron back in the day, Klein had said, he would trust any AI Tony Stark had programmed to lead SHIELD.

The lasers scan the tattoo, and Clint watches as it analyzes and copies the pattern into its hard drive. The lights that are illuminating the entire cockpit suddenly go out, and he’s left in the complete darkness of the jet for a split second, where all he hears is his own breathing, right up until the hard drive begins to light up again.

The message “rebooting…” is loading on screen, and soon enough, a status bar appears. He can’t understand all that it says on the screen, but when he asks FRIDAY, “What are you doing, FRIDAY?”, he sees the screen light up to the left, and watches as his own personal file is pulled forward.

Pictures, of all sorts, flash before his eyes as the AI silently syphons them for information, and as the blue lights encompass everything on the screen, he realizes it’s going through every single of his missions, files and more, compiling a list in order to-

“Please, provide your full name.”

The AI’s voice interrupts his train of thought, and the blue light turns slightly orange, as the screen unlocks. He’s never seen the command lines look quite like this, and the login screen in front of him is asking him to speak his name. So he does. 

“Barton, Clinton Francis.”

The loading screen shuffles for a half an instant, and immediately the security passcode is locked in place.

“Welcome to the last level of SHIELD, Director Barton.”

He feels everything inside of him turn around when she announces him - his own file is blinking on one side of the screen, and on top of all the other files he’s been able to access as a level 7, he can now see levels up and to 12. There are 12 levels of security in SHIELD?

Clint feels like he should have known this, but there was a lot that Nick Fury kept from him, and he has no doubt that it will take some time for him to learn all the tricks of the trade. He is just about to tell her to open up the latch to let the Immortal Iron Fist and his side-kick onto the jet, so he can take them home with him to New York, when he notices a red exclamation point on the top of the screen.

“Would you like to unlock a message from Secretary Thunderbolt Ross, Director?” FRIDAY asks, and Clint frowns.

“Why am I only seeing this now?”

“It was intended for the Director of SHIELD. You were not that until some minutes ago, Sir,” she explains, and Clint nods. It makes sense.

“Will it self destroy if I watch it one time, or can I watch it again if I need to?” 

“You can watch it as many times as you want. I also have a captioning algorithm already working on making it easier for you to understand his message,” she continues, and for once, Clint feels evermore thankful to Tony Stark for abilitating his hearing problems. No matter the hearing aids he wore, there would always come a time where he needed to take them off - the same way any person who wore glasses sometimes needed to take them off the bridge of their nose to free their face from the weight of it.

“Roll decryption and play the video,” Clint instructs, and pulls the chest plate back on top of his shirt, followed by the haori.

The message starts playing as soon as the captions have rendered. Thaddeus Ross’ face appears, pixelated by the hologram technology, in the same blue hues Stark used in the SHIELD compound in New York. 

“Director Fury has not been located since the Event, so I am addressing this message to you, the Director of SHIELD, whoever you are. If this video does not get a response within five days, I will assume that SHIELD has suffered the same fate as the United States, as the Military, as the CIA and as the FBI, and that it is left without a leader. In that case, I will assume command of all aspects of SHIELD and merge it with the intelligence community of the United States, under my guidance.

In the event that someone out there sees this message, I would like to set up a meeting with you and discuss a partnership over SHIELD’s ressources. As you know, Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff, the Falcon and Miss Maximoff are still known fugitives of the State, and will still face consequences for their actions. I have set up an extradition plan for them should they decide to leave Wakanda for any other country in the world, and if SHIELD makes contact with them, I will assume that SHIELD is a hostile organization and treat it as such-” a red dot begins flashing on the screen, which draws Clint’s attention, but he keeps on listening to Ross, not wanting to interrupt the lecture he is getting, “-If SHIELD does not comply with the American Martial Law that I have set in place, I will treat it as a hostile organization. If SHIELD refuses to collaborate with any of the Intelligence agencies under my command, I will treat it as a hostile organization. Whoever sees this message, if it reaches anyone at all, you are advised to make direct contact with me and me only. We will know if you don’t.”

“They won’t,” FRIDAY says, as the messages shuffles to an end, before continuing, “A signal originating from Wakanda seems to have tracked the Quinjet’s location, Sir. It would seem that the signal is trying to divert the cameras so as to get an eye on who has just unlocked all the sensitive material available to SHIELD. I would advise you to put on your mask, Director. Do you want me to shuffle your voice when the feed goes live?”

“No, don’t mess with my voice, I’ll deal with that. Hold off the feed until I-” he pulls on the mask across his face and hair, feeling the tug of his hair against the fabric inside of the mask, “- have this back on. The slits activate and mask his eyes, activating what he feels is what Tony usually sees from inside his own faceplate, and as he adjusts the straps of the armguards, the feed finally comes live, FRIDAY’s security letting it through.

Clint almost flinches when he sees who is on the other side of the feed: Natasha and Steve are flanking a young African girl. The built-in AI in the screen identifies her as Shuri, King T’Challa’s little sister and leader of the Wakandan International Outreach Centre. 

“Who are we talking to?” Steve asks, and Clint notices the hostility in his eyes. Biting his tongue, Clint thinks about his answer.

Should he tell them? That it’s him? That he’s alive? 

Natasha shouldn’t know about Ronin. She came to SHIELD after that, and the files were redacted, as well as locked away in a safe where Clint himself couldn’t access them. From the look on her face, she doesn’t seem to know who he is. She is a better liar than he is, but Clint knows her well enough to know that she isn’t bluffing the surprise and the suspicion on her face right now.

They have no idea. 

He’d like to keep it that way.

“The Director of SHIELD,” he replies, and sees Steve’s twitch. This time however, it’s Shuri who replies:

“Our database does not recognize you as a SHIELD representative. We have used both Captain Rogers’ and Agent Romanoff’s access to your servers to locate the new leader of SHIELD after the Snap, and were surprised when we found out that you had taken Director Fury’s place.”

He sees her tapping on a keyboard, but does not recognize the technology behind them. It must be Wakandan tech. He can feel the weight in his stomach from having to lie to his best friend and to his teammate, but he cannot tell them who he is right now. If he does so, all hope will be lost. He hast to keep the world running until  _ she  _ arrives. He has not idea how far it is from Hala to Earth, but he knows she won’t make it for a couple of months.

He has to hold the lines.

“Director Fury set this up long ago,” is the reply he goes with, as he stands closer, noticing FRIDAY is now broadcasting him completely to them. He sees the screen reflection in Natasha’s eyes and sees that Shuri’s tech, whatever it is, is scanning his body. He almost feels the snake against his arm moving and coiling, and when something on their side beeps red, he sees Natasha let out a breath.

“Have you heard from Agent Barton?” she asks, and Steve’s head whips to her - she’s going off script, that much Clint can tell. Hearing her say his name hurts him inside, and the look of worry on the lines against her eyes and on her forehead almost make him reconsider lying to them.

He shakes his head. “Agent Barton remains missing.”

“We scanned his homestead and found it empty - do you- do you have any info on the-”

Steve interrupts Natasha, “Do you know if anyone from his family survived Thanos?”

Does he tell them that Nathaniel is well and alive? Does he tell them?

For a split second, time stands still, as he weighs the pros and cons on each side. If he tells them that he knows Nathaniel is in New York, in Pepper’s care, they will know someone brought him there. It could have been someone. Anyone.

And then-

“His youngest, Nathaniel, is safe and sound in the care of Peppers Potts, in the Avengers headquarters in New York.” He pauses, as a look of relief floods both Steve and Natasha’s faces, Shuri busy looking up information on said Nathaniel. Clint continues, through the mask: “He was brought there by Agent Barton’s brother, Barney.”

“Barney survived the Snap?” Natasha asks. 

“The other Barton brother seems to have made it through whatever event caused the worldwide mass destruction we have been witnessing. He remains in hiding now, though.”

He can feel his heartbeat steadying as he’s telling them that - there’s no way in hell that they will be able to find Barney. He doesn’t even  _ know _ if Barney is alive at this point, so it seemed like the best solution.

“FRIDAY, cut the feed,” he instructs, and the connection goes dark right before he can hear Natasha, Steve and Shuri in unison cry out a ‘NO!” in a single voice. “Open the latch, we’re going to take Rand and Meachum back to New York, and then we’ll lay out a plan from there.”

“Why not go Bangladesh or Jakarta and secure Agents Drew and Morse, sir?”

“I need to discuss a plan of action with Miss Potts and with Klein. I have to figure out how to keep Ross from causing too much trouble, and besides, we need to do a headcount about how many SHIELD agents are still left standing - is there any way to reroute some of Project Insight in order to do a headcount?” he asks, as he pulls off the mask from his face again, his hair catching in one of the edges.

He grimaces as he has to rip it off, and watches as Ward and Danny come onto the jet.

“You’re going to need a haircut if you keep making that face whenever you’re taking that off,” Danny comments, before doing a 360 on his feet in the hull of the jet. “This is so dope, man. Can you make it invisible?”

“All SHIELD jets are equipped with anti reflection panels which makes it invisible to the naked eye,” FRIDAY replies. “Welcome aboard, Mister Rand, and Mister Meachum.”

“What’s the plan, Director”? Danny asks, as he sits down on the table in the middle of the hull, and Clint looks over at him. He has no idea what to tell him. 

Does he have a plan?

“We are going to regroup, figure out how many SHIELD agents are left standing. We’re bringing you back to New York, you are needed on the streets of New York, and you,” Clint points at Ward, “need to get Rand Enterprises working with Stark Industries, in order to secure the safety of the city, before it breaks into complete chaos. Ross has instituted martial law, which means that they’re going to try and keep the population under control - that has never worked out so great before, and before we know it, there’ll be a civil war brewing. Ross wants power, it’s all he’s ever wanted, and with nobody standing in his way now, he’s about to become the most powerful man on the planet, and the only thing standing between him and total, complete world domination, is SHIELD.”

“That’s you,” Danny says, as he points to Clint.

“Yep, that’s me. I have to figure out how to keep the planet from self destructing. I am considering joining forces with Wakanda in order to disengage all nuclear warheads, but I don’t know if they’re going to listen to me-”

“Wait, wha- They don’t know it’s you? Under that?” Ward motions to his attire, and Clint shakes his head. “But why not? I mean, you’re like the one relatable Avenger. Why aren’t you telling them it’s you?”

Clint sighs. It’s not that easy. “I have to do something I can’t tell either of you about, and if I told them, they’re going to want to help, and I can’t have them help by being in outer space. Steve Rogers can’t leave Earth, he’s its best defender, along with Thor and Natasha and whoever else is left.”

“You said leave Earth- is there- is there something out there that’s going to fix this?” Danny asks, and Clint nods again. 

“I can’t tell you, but she’ll fix a lot of things. Hopefully.”

* * *

There’s another incoming message from Wakanda lying in the inbox of the Director SHIELD in the morning.

Another one ticks in a couple of hours later.

Clint doesn’t go to the Avengers headquarters, nor does he go to visit Kate or Nathaniel, when he sets off Danny Rand and Ward Meachum on American territory. The jet is out of American airspace almost immediately after he’s set them off, on one of the piers in New York City.

He needs to reach International Waters before he can settle down. Klein and Galaga-guy had told him that there had been a visit the day before. From Wakanda. A vibranium jet had landed on the helipad, and out of the aircraft had walked Captain America and the Black Widow, accompanied by King T’Challa’s little sister, Shuri. The commander of the Dora Milaje had flanked her, to protect her, they said.

There had been discussions about SHIELD and about its leadership. Klein had told him in a briefing that Natasha had gone to see Nathaniel, and had asked him if his dad was alive. Asking the kid for information, that had felt like a blow to Clint’s mind, but in all fairness, he knew that lying to them about him being alive was unfair to them.

He didn’t have to. And yet, here he was, making a dash for the international limit so that he could settle down for a couple of hours and catch some sleep. 

Steve had gone to speak with Kate, apparently. He had found her in the archery range, and had commented on her using one of Clint’s bows. She had let loose an arrow, and made a bullseye with the same precision Clint had, apparently. Klein had sent him the footage of the training session, and when he saw her stance, her posture and her skillset with the bow, he knew it had been a good decision to give it to her.

“What’s the status on the W.I.O.C. and Stark merger?” he asks Friday, as he climbs down from the pilot’s chair and goes to the center of the jet. The autopilot will force it to circle around in the international waters in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, circling the last known location of the Raft.

FRIDAY’s screen activates, as she pulls open some files: “It would seem that Shuri has discussed with Miss Potts about the Arc Reactor technology. Doctor Banner, who is still in Wakanda, had some views about the expansion of the energy source, and it would seem that Shuri had also been talking to Doctors Cho and Foster about it. Some of Jane Foster’s research on the Einstein-Rosen Bridges could help secure an energy source for the whole Eastern board, if Thor could summon the Bifrost onto the reactor-”

“Wait, Thor can- he- wait what?” Clint interrupts, and FRIDAY rewinds some of the documents she’s been showing him. 

“Thor’s new weapon, an axe it would seem, has the power to control the Bifrost, which is how he has been getting around the world in less than a second every time he travels. He searches for Tony Stark, Captain Rogers said.” She pauses, as a video loads. Clint can see on the thumbnail that it’s a recording of Steve, and he frowns at it. 

“What’s this?”

“A message for Clint Barton from Steve Rogers. They do not know you are alive, but he has left you a message. He hopes you will see it. He will not know that it has been opened, I encrypted it and stored it on an offline server, so there will be no ping back that it has been opened. Only you can unlock it, so for him, it will look as if it remains untouched in Clint Barton’s inbox. It would seem that he has some news.”

Clint frowns, as the recording begins.

Steve looks tired. He is exhausted, and Clint realizes he has never seen him so. Not after Ultron, not after Loki, not after the fall of SHIELD to HYDRA. Steve looks tired, like he has lost all his will to live.

His voice is thick, coarse, as if he has been crying but hasn’t cleared his throat after. “Agent Barton, we don’t know if- we don’t know how many people disappeared in the Snap. It occured in Wakanda, when the Titan called Thanos took the last Infinity Stone from Vision’s head. Bruce Banner contacted me right after Tony had been taken in New York, and told me about these Infinity Stones. There are six, apparently - the Power stone, the Mind stone, the Time stone, the Space stone, the Reality Stone and the Soul Stone… It’s what the Tesseract was. It was an Infinity Stone. And, Loki’s scepter was an Infinity Stone too.

I remember that, right after Loki, you would talk about deep space. You’d say that there was something out there coming our way, and that you could feel it. We all looked at you like you were insane, I remember that. But Clint… You were right. No matter what we thought or what you saw while you were under Loki’s influence, it all adds up. Jane Foster, the scientist, has seen it too - she was possessed by the Reality Stone, or so Thor has told me. There’s a new guy on the team, he’s called Rocket. He’s a genetically enhanced raccoon, but doesn’t like being called that. He says that one of the people on his team secured the Power stone some years ago and put it on a planet called Xandar. Thor, however, told us that Thanos wiped Xandar from the map entirely.

Thor is out there looking for Tony Stark. Shuri, she- she’s T’Challa’s little sister, she’s found a signal. It’s very weak, but she’s managed to magnify it with Banner’s help. It’s a tracking device in Tony’s suit, it would seem. They haven’t pinpointed his location yet, but they’re hoping that since his suit was made of nano-technology, it means he survived.”

In the video, Steve pulls his hand down over his face, before rubbing his eyes. He sighs.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You were practically Fury’s left hand man, and you were the one he chose to pick the Tesseract. Maybe you’d know what to do, if you were… If you were still here. Shuri and Banner are trying to reroute some of Project Insight to try and make a headcount of who’s alive. But, I thought- I thought that if you were out there, you might want to know: we found your brother. He was at your homestead, hiding in the barn.”

Clint’s heart almost stops. Barney’s alive?!

“He didn’t want to come with us to Wakanda, but we dropped him off in New York City. He said that if you were alive, you’d know where to find him. But, Agent Klein told us that he’s the one who brought your kid to New York, so… If you didn’t bring Nate- well. I hope you see this message, Hawkeye. We miss you.”

The video cuts short, and Clint sits back in the chair wondering what the hell he’s just seen. Not only is Barney alive, but apparently Tony is too? He needs to figure out how to talk with this Shuri. He needs to.

And he needs to see his brother.

“FRIDAY, reroute. I’m going back to New York.”

“But we just-”

“I don’t care. I don’t care what the curfew says or what Ross has set up to deter anyone from entering American airspace.”

He goes to fetch the Ronin mask again, and pulls it onto his head. The hair on the sides of his head tug and pull when he pulls it down, and he moans - he is going to have to do something about the hair.

But first things first. 

He needs to see his brother. And, in this very instant, it’s the only thing he can think off.

Right up until something lands on the Quinjet. FRIDAY alerts him a split second after contact was made, but Clint’s got his katana in his hand before the hull door is ripped apart. The thunderbolts and lighting outside betray the presence on the jet before he recognizes Thor.

Thor looks entirely different from what he remembers him.

“I know it’s you, Barton,” Thor says, heaving for air. His hair is cropped short, and he looks like he’s been through hell. Is there even- is that a different eye color?

Clint gets into a fighting stance. “What do you want, Thor?” 

He lifts up the Katana, and watches carefully as Thor puts down the axe. It is magnificent, Clint will say that much, and it is much more appropriate in Thor’s hands than the old hammer was, no matter how annoyed Clint was at not being able to lift it.

“I need to speak to you about the Infinity Stones. And about the planet Hala. I think that you know what I need to talk to you about. A formidable warrior is heading towards Earth, and I think that you know exactly who they are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, how did you like it? I had a lot of fun digging up Leon Nuñez from the Marvel-archives, since he's an actual Marvel character. He's a mutant whose powers is giving powers through tattoos - he almost destroyed reality when he gave someone a Phoenix tattoo. He isn't really omniscient in the comics, but I thought that it would add some flair to the story.  
> Did you catch the mentions of Eric Brooks, the other Ronin as well? He's so badass as well, but he won't appear in this fic. (Or will he?)
> 
> But, most importantly: Barney's alive! And Thor knows Carol? Apparently?
> 
> I hope you guys liked it. Let me know, please? I am missing 1667 words as of this instant (November 28th, 2018) to win NaNoWriMo, but I have some things to do before I can sit down and begin the next chapter. But I'll probably reach the 50k mark before the day is over, so that's super amazing! Your support and feedback is such a motivational factor, you guys have no idea how happy I get when I see a "New comment on 'Til the Skies Bleeds Ashes" or a "Someone left kudos on 'Til the Skies Bleeds Ashes' e-mail dump into my inbox when I'm at work or at University.
> 
> You guys are the best cheerleaders anyone could ever hope for!


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